Hold It Together

Chapters

The Summer Sun Celebration, Section B
Episode III: The Griffon, Brushed Off
0_0_4: Thunder/Head-On
The Fifth One: The Trouble with Learning...
7 Minus 1: ...Is Learning Too Little
Lucky Number: Multi-Faceted Approaches
8: C'mon Over Now, Ya Hear?
3^2: Gumdrop the Ball
√100: Treading On Hooves
Nosebleed: Hit the Ground Galloping
Best Number: A Wreath of Oopsie-Daisies
Missing Elevator Button: Check
Twice Lucky: Beware Gravity
The Pinkening
16/16/16/16: Repinkussions
7th Prime: Lesson One
9+9: Cider Pressure
The Sun: Creeping, Crawling Concerns
The Summer Sun Celebration, Part 1

The Summer Sun Celebration, Section B

Lapis, Lyra, and Bon Bon trotted into the Town Hall just in time to find complete chaos.

Lapis felt his jaw drop as he took in the sight of ponies running around and screaming like chickens with their heads cut off, or else sitting in corners, rocking back and forth, and hyperventilating. Mayor Mare was up on stage, trying to make herself heard over the noise, but it was clear from her over-wide eyes and tucked-back ears that she was panicking just as much as every other pony in the room. In the back of the room, a pale pegasus slipped on a purple Earth-pony’s tail, promptly falling flat on her face with a ground-shaking thump. Mayor Mare yelped at the noise and fell to the floor, covering her head with her forehooves.

“Wow,” Lapis muttered. “Well, at least it’s not violent…”

“Don’t say that, you’ll give them ideas,” Bon Bon replied. “Know any megaphone spells?”

“Uh… no.”

“Oh, what good are you, then. Lyra?”

“I can whistle really loud!” Lyra chirped, raising a hoof. “I used to do it all the time, before I figured out how to play-”

“It’ll have to do,” Bon Bon said. “Ready? On three. One. Two…”

Lyra frowned, then sucked in a breath.

“Three!”

A shrill, piercing whistle erupted from Lyra’s pursed lips, and Lapis winced as he felt his ears tuck themselves flat against his head. All through the room, ponies cringed away from the noise, turning their heads and scrunching their eyes shut. It went on for a good ten seconds before Lyra finally ran out of steam, and Bon Bon stepped forward, puffing up her chest and glaring toward the suddenly-still crowd.

“Alright, everypony, listen up!” Bon Bon barked, and suddenly Lapis couldn’t help but imagine her as a drill sergeant. “Princess Celestia’s student has dispatched herself and a team of… qualified ponies to enter the Everfree Forest and stop Nightmare Moon. Until she succeeds, we need to keep this town in order, and that means not panicking! The next pony I see galloping in circles and screaming is going to end up patrolling the border, alone. Is. That. Clear?!”

Nopony moved a muscle. Bon Bon straightened her back and nodded. “Good. Now, Mayor Mare, where do these ponies need to be right now?”

Mayor Mare picked her head up from beneath her hooves. “What? Oh. Oh!” She scrambled to her hooves, forcing a grin as she dusted herself off, then cleared her throat. “Right now, the safest place for ponies to be is inside their own homes. Whatever the Princess’ student is doing right now, it’s sure to take a while, so-”

“Are you saying we’re supposed to just sit on our hooves and wait?!” snapped some pony in the crowd, and a ripple of worried murmurs spread in the wake.

“Absolutely not,” Bon Bon said, stepping forward and putting her hoof down. “Day or no day, ponies still need to eat, sleep, and keep each other safe. So…” Bon Bon trailed off, glancing at Mayor Mare.

“…So,” Mayor Mare finished, “we’ll need to make sure that can happen. First things first… let’s make sure ponies can see. I need twenty volunteers, to find and light enough lanterns to keep Cantering Boulevard and the main plaza bright enough that we won’t trip on our own hooves. Oh, and how many of you can cook?”

A few ponies raised hesitant hooves, and the mayor nodded. “Everypony who just raised their hooves, go stand on that side of the room. In a little while, I’m going to show you to the food reserves. You’re going to be making emergency rations for the whole town, so once I’ve shown you where the oats are… well, you’d best find any ponies that you can trust not to burn oatmeal…”

As the mayor continued to issue orders, Bon Bon stepped back between Lapis and Lyra, heaving a quick, relieved sigh. “Thank goodness.”

“That was some quick thinking, Bon Bon,” Lyra muttered, glancing between her and the mayor. “Have you done anything like this before?”

“No, but I know the Mayor,” Bon Bon replied. “She’s a decent pony when things are running according to schedule, but as soon as something unexpected happens…” She cut herself off. “Well, I gave her the push she needed, and it looks like she’s back in her stride.”

“No kidding,” Lapis said, watching Mayor Mare lead the group of conscripted cooks toward a closet to the side. “You think she’ll need any more help?”

“I hope not,” Bon Bon muttered. “But right now, we need to be worrying about any actual danger.”

“Danger?!” Lyra squeaked, her ears tucking back. “But… wait, won’t the guards take care of that?”

“They already are. If they remember their training, they’re patrolling the village,” Bon Bon said. “But there’s a lot of Ponyville, and not very many guards, so if I were them, I’d only be patrolling the border of the Everfree.”

And how do you know what the guards are trained to do? Lapis thought, frowning at Bon Bon. “Hey, hold up a second,” he said, as something else occurred to him. “Does Ponyville have any neighboring towns? Anywhere that we should send messages to, to let them know what’s going on?”

Bon Bon and Lyra both froze.

“Wait,” Lyra whispered. “Bon Bon, do you think anypony outside of Ponyville knows what’s going on?”

“You know, I don’t think they do,” Bon Bon said, her eyes wide. “But… well, the only place near enough to send a messenger to is Cloudsdale, and none of us are pegasi.”

“But we have to tell them!” Lyra said, turning to face her friend. “Bon Bon, they’re probably an even bigger mess than we are right now!”

“Don’t worry, I got it!” a voice called from across the room. Lapis, Lyra, and Bon Bon all looked up at once, just in time to see the cloudy-gray pegasus from before take off towards a window - and then ram, face-first, into the wall beside the window.

Lapis winced, and Bon Bon huffed a sigh. “Derpy, no offense, but we might need a different pegasus for this one.”

“No, no, I got it,” said ‘Derpy,’ pulling her face off the ground with a pop. To Lapis’ surprise, the pegasus’ eyes were looking in two completely different directions, neither of which was forward. “Just gotta get outside first, and I’ll be there in no time!”

“No, you’re not going to fly anywhere at night, especially not outside of Ponyville town limits…” Bon Bon said, trotting over toward Derpy.

“…Is she okay?” Lapis muttered, glancing over at Lyra.

Lyra nodded, sighing. “Yeah, she’s alright, her eyes just kinda… do that. That’s Derpy Hooves, the town mail-pony. She’s good at her job, but a little clumsy.”

Well, that explains why I’ve been fixing so many broken mailboxes, Lapis thought, and he immediately felt bad for thinking it. “You think it’s a bad idea to let her fly to, uh, Cloudsdale?”

“Normally, it’d be no problem, but tonight…” Lyra stopped, her eyes narrowing in thought. “Or… today, I guess? Today, it could be an issue.”

Lapis nodded, glancing back at the pegasus. “Still, maybe we should let her know that we’re sending somepony. Just in case she has family over in Cloudsdale.”

“And as soon as somepony’s been sent, I will,” Bon Bon muttered, trotting back over from where she’d been talking to Derpy. “Right now, though, we have to focus on the danger to Ponyville. If something comes out of the Everfree, well, that’s where the guards are. They’ll take care of it. The real issue is what might happen if somepony inside the village starts causing trouble.”

“Causing trouble?” Lyra said, cocking her head. “But… it’s already an emergency, why would anypony cause trouble?”

“They wouldn’t do it on purpose, they’d be panicking,” Lapis said, the gears already turning in his head. “But what would we even do?”

“We’d figure out where everypony else is, and wait there,” Bon Bon said, grinning. “The town square.”

Bon Bon and Lyra turned and headed for the door. Lapis went to follow them, but paused when he saw Derpy scowl and scrunch her mis-aligned eyes in determination - then she took off, heading for the ceiling, but swerved just in the nick of time to pass through the window instead.

Lapis briefly considered trying to stop her - there was a fair chance she’d hurt herself, after all. But, I don’t have wings. And… well, even if I did, I don’t think I’d use them this time. If it were my family, I wouldn’t stop just because of one random pony.

…Besides, somehow, I think she’s got this. Lapis nodded, then turned and hurried to catch up to Lyra and Bon Bon.

Yeah. She’s got this.

Lapis felt his jaw drop as he reached the town square. Huh… not so panicky and useless after all, are they?

Ten minutes ago, the town square had just been one more wall of darkness, but whoever Mayor Mare had put in charge of illumination had been good at their job - wrought-iron and glass lanterns were scattered across the stone of the courtyard, so that the entire square was lit by dim, amber-hued circles. It almost looked like a modern-art piece; there were enough ponies seated or waiting in line, their colorful coats and manes contrasting against each other, that it looked as if a few dozen buckets of paint had been emptied across the square at random.
Along one side of the square was a single long row of splintery tables, where Mayor Mare’s designated cooks ladled oatmeal into the waiting ponies’ bowls. In one corner was the single biggest cauldron that Lapis had ever seen - a boulder of glinting pewter at least twice as tall as he was, with a roaring bonfire underneath and steam almost thick enough to be a cloud rolling off the top. As he watched, a well-built maroon stallion with an orange mane approached the cauldron, a smaller pot gripped in his teeth as if it were a basket. He climbed up a nearby stepladder, dunked the pot over the cauldron’s rim, and brought it back full to the brim with oatmeal, before climbing back down and trotting the pot toward one of the tables. Lapis could smell the oatmeal from here, and it wasn’t just plain - apple chunks with cinnamon and nutmeg, and maybe some crushed pecans?
It smelled delicious, but he seemed to be about the only pony that was enjoying the aroma. As he started making his way into the crowd, passing by little circles of ponies huddled around lanterns to eat, all the faces that he saw were tense - ears upright and flicking around to catch any noise, their eyes darting to the edge of the square as if expecting something to jump out and start attacking at any moment.
So… panicky, but not panicking, Lapis thought. You know what? That’s fair. Not like I’d be much better.

“There you are!” Bon Bon snapped, and Lapis turned to see her trotting toward him from one of the tables. “I swear, I take my eyes off you for three seconds- Never mind. So far, everything’s been alright, but we’d still better not drop our guard.”

“No kidding,” Lapis replied. “What needs done?”

Bon Bon blinked, her ears flicking suddenly upright. “By you? …Well, Granny Smith’s cooking pot is about ready to break. Do you have the magic to spare-”

“Yep,” Lapis said. “Just point to her, and then get me as soon as anything else is broken.”

“Well, if you’re sure… She’s all the way over there, at the end of the tables.”

Lapis nodded, then started trotting in the appropriate direction. There stood a pale green Earth-pony with a white mane and tail, both of which were tied back into tight, no-nonsense buns. She was old, old enough that Lapis could practically hear her joints creaking as she jerked the ladle of her pot in slow, crooked circles. Her cooking pot was in bad shape, one of the mounts for its handle looked like it was about to fall off.

“Excuse me, miss,” Lapis said, coming up to stand next to the old mare. “Sorry to bother you, but-”

“Whaaaa?” asked Granny Smith, cupping one hoof to her ear.

Lapis leaned closer, then continued. “I heard that you needed help with-”

Granny Smith scowled, putting her hoof down. “Help, with oatmeal? Now, you listen here, sonny. Ah’ve been makin’ oatmeal fer fifty years ‘fore you were a twinkle in yer sire’s eye, and Ah’ll go on makin’ oatmeal fer another ten yet. So if y’all wouldn’t mind, Ah’d thank you to leave the cookin’ to the per-fessionals.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t dream of messing with your oatmeal recipe, the smell had my mouth watering from the other side of the square,” Lapis quickly said, raising a hoof apologetically. “It’s the cooking pot I’m here to help with. The handle isn’t looking too good, I’m over here to fix it.”

Granny cocked a snow-white eyebrow, glancing at the steaming pot of oatmeal and then squinting at Lapis right in his eyes. “Ah think the pot may be a mite hot fer that just now.”

“Not for me,” Lapis said. “It’ll take five seconds, nopony will get hurt, and I promise not to spill a single oat. Please?”

She continued to squint at him for a few moments, then shrugged and stepped back. “Yer call.”

“Thanks,” Lapis said, then he gripped the handle mount, pushed it into position, and shut his eyes. There was a flash of light, accompanied by a burst of warmth on Lapis’ flank and a sudden burst of fatigue that left him slightly weak at the knees.

He opened his eyes, and sure enough, the mount looked as if it had never been broken at all. “Perfect. Alright, I’m done.”

Lapis turned to look at Granny Smith, and found that she was preoccupied with blinking the spots from her eyes. Once she had, she squinted down at the pot, and grunted. “Seems you are. I’ll be impressed if you work out a way to do that fer mah hip.”

Lapis had just opened his mouth to reply when a crack rang out through the square like a gunshot. He whipped around, trying to spot the source, and for a moment he couldn’t see anything wrong. Then, slowly, the giant cauldron full of oatmeal started listing to the side with a deep metallic groan.

Oh shit.

All at once, Lapis was running - toward the cauldron. The large, red pony who had been on the ladder got there first. He snorted and set his jaw, reared up on his back hooves, and caught the cauldron, skidding an inch back on the flagstones. His front hooves smoked against the scalding pewter, an acrid scent like burning hair prickling Lapis’ nostrils.

“Can’t… hold it long!” the red pony bellowed, his face strained.

Lapis skidded to a stop beside Red. Behind him, half a dozen other ponies ran toward the pot, more behind them. He shut them out for now, ducked to see what had broken, squinting against the baking roar of the cook-fire, clenching his teeth against the rapid pounding of his pulse. The pot was held up on a ring-shaped metal stand with three scorched wood legs. One leg had snapped, splinters long as nails stabbing out from a length of wood as thick as Lapis’ leg. Wood?! Who the hell-

Beside Lapis, another pony tried to help hold the cauldron upright. His hoof hissed against the scorching metal, and he pulled away with a yelp. No time for questions. Fix it. Now!

Lapis grasped the leg of the stand with his magic, groaned as the heat of the fire slammed against him. He lifted the brace into position, jammed the splintered ends together, and pushed.

It might’ve been his imagination, but the flash of light seemed brighter than usual, and the surge of weakness that shot through his body seemed to leave his knees less steady than before. When Lapis opened his eyes, the stand was as whole as it had ever been. Red must’ve been able to feel the support - he didn’t wait for confirmation before dropping from the side of the pot, sitting on his rump and grimacing as he cradled his front hooves against his chest. His hooves were scorched black around the edges of his metal horseshoes, smoke rising from the char.

“You alright?” Lapis heard someone ask. Red turned, bright-green eyes meeting Lapis’, and Lapis realized dimly that the asking voice was his own.

“E-yup,” Red said, grinning. His voice was deep as a bass guitar, and had the same country twang as Granny Smith’s. “But Ah’d’ve been worse without your help. How’d you find the spare leg for the stand so fast?”

“…I didn’t,” Lapis said. “I fixed the old one. Though, if one leg broke just now, the others might be at the end of their rope too.”

Red nodded, wincing as he set his front hooves back on the ground. “E-yup. There’s some spare posts in the Apple family barn, but Ah think Ah’d better stay here.”

“Then you’ll be staying too, Lapis,” said a voice. Lapis turned to see that Bon Bon had arrived, the Mayor struggling for breath by her side.

“How much… galloping… do you do?” panted the mayor. “But yes… I need volunteers, five ponies, not Lapis, not Big Mac, to go to the Apple barn, grab the posts, brace this thing up.”

Five hooves shot up from the crowd at once, and Big Mac spoke again. “Applebloom, the posts are in the corner by the ladders. You know the one?”

“Well, yeah…” said a high voice. A small, meringue-yellow filly with a comically oversized red bow in her mane stepped out of the crowd, then nodded. “…Ah think so. But Big Mac, Ah can’t just leave you here alone!”

Lapis cocked an eyebrow, then winced as someone - Lyra - spoke directly from his side. How long has she been there for?

“Don’t worry, he’s not alone at all,” Lyra said, grinning. “We’re all right here, aren’t we?”

Big Mac chuckled. “E-yup. Ah’ll be fine, Applebloom, Ah promise. Just show these ponies where to get those posts, and hurry on back. Alright?”

Applebloom swallowed, her ears tucking back against her head. Then she nodded. “Alright.” She hesitated for a second, then turned and scampered off toward the edge of town, the volunteer ponies breaking into a trot after her.

As soon as she was out of visual range, Big Mac sighed, then sat back on the flagstones with a thump that Lapis felt more than heard. “Ah’d’ve hated for her to see me get hurt too bad,” he muttered, staring at the flagstones. “Thank you. All of you.”

“Least we can do,” Lapis replied, sitting down more gingerly beside the massive stallion. Lyra and Bon Bon taking a seat to Big Mac’s opposite side.

Big Mac glanced up, looking Lapis over. “Ah don’t think we’ve met before.”

“Well, I only moved in three days ago,” Lapis replied, offering a hoof. “Lapis Print.”

Big Mac eyed Lapis’ hoof, then raised his own in turn, still black around the horseshoe. “Big Macintosh. But Big Mac'll do fine.”

They shook hooves - Lapis wasn’t quite sure how, but somehow the feeling was the same as a handshake - then Big Mac turned to look at Lyra and Bon Bon. “And the two of you, Ah’ve seen before.”

“Lyra Heartstrings,” said Lyra, “and this is Bon Bon. I’m a musician, and she-”

“Runs the candy shop on Acorn Route, and occasionally manages to introduce herself,” Bon Bon cut in, grinning over at Lyra. “And Lapis here is this year’s repair-pony.”

Lapis blinked. “Wait. This year’s?”

Big Mac chuckled. “E-yup. And Ah’m a member of the Apple family.”

“That makes the two of you the busiest pair of ponies in town, huh?” Lyra added.

To Lapis’ surprise, Big Mac shook his head. “Nope. Applejack’s got both of us beat. Speakin’ of, anypony seen her lately?”

Oh. “Uh, she joined in with the rest of the team heading into the Everfree,” Lapis replied. Right on cue, a bestial roar echoed out of the forest, causing a few of the ponies - Lyra among them - to yelp in surprise. About a dozen of them scrambled to their hooves, and a third of those took off, screaming and skittering out of the lights of the town square.

“Wonderful,” Bon Bon muttered, glaring after the runners. “We’d better go catch those fillies once the posts are in place, or they might run into somepony’s window.”

“E-yup.”

Lapis looked around, then cocked an eyebrow. “Speaking of which…”

The five ponies who had left were walking in tandem into the town square, bearing a pile of wood posts atop their backs. Sat on the center of the stack was a grinning Applebloom, who waved at Big Mac as she got closer.

“Ah knew she remembered where those were,” Big Mac said, grinning and standing up. “Ah’ll take things from here. Once this is all over, y’all can come by the Apple farm any time you like - for now, go catch those other ponies.”

“Got it,” Bon Bon said, rising.

“You need a ha- hoof again, just holler,” Lapis added.

Big Mac nodded, then turned and started toward his sister. Lapis smiled as he watched them briefly embrace, then he turned and followed Bon Bon out of the main square, only briefly stumbling as one of his knees jittered.

“Okay,” Bon Bon started, “we’ve got four ponies running off into the town at random. If they could see, they’d probably end up inside their own homes, but since that’s not the case, they’ll be anywhere from ‘almost right’ to ‘the other side of town.’”

“Do we split up to look for them?” Lapis asked.

Bon Bon shook her head. “In this lighting, we’d just get lost too. We need lanterns first - or, well, I need a lantern. The two of you are unicorns, so you should be fine.”

“Yep,” Lyra chirped, and suddenly her horn was glowing the same hue of neon orange as her eyes, bright enough to light up the flagstones beneath her hooves for about five steps.

Lapis blinked in the light, then grimaced. Okay, I really need to find a beginner’s guide to magic somewhere. “So, let’s say I needed a lantern too…”

Lyra and Bon Bon both turned to look at him.

“…You don’t know a Hornlight spell either?” Bon Bon asked, raising an eyebrow. “Were you raised by griffons or something?”

“Bon Bon!” Lyra said, briefly shooting her friend a look before turning to Lapis. “I didn’t know much magic at all either, until three years ago. I only really needed telekinesis to play the lyre, so learning anything else wasn’t really important. Bon Bon is just used to working with more… versatile unicorns.”

Griffons? Lapis thought, confused.
Like, the half-lion half-eagle griffons?
Those exist here?
Okay. Sure, why not.

“Every unicorn in Canterlot knows how to cast a Hornlight,” Bon Bon muttered.

Lyra looked up, glancing at the houses around them, her expression surprised. “Wait, we’re in Canterlot? Wow, I never even noticed! Were the houses always so short here?”

Lapis snorted, and Bon Bon chuckled. “Oh, alright, I get it. I’m sorry for the comment, Lapis. There’ll be plenty of lanterns, I’m sure.”

“No harm done,” Lapis replied. “Though, Lyra, I might end up asking you for some guidebook recommendations or something.”

“I can do that,” Lyra said, turning and heading for a nearby alley. “Ooh! Hey, I found some extra lanterns over here!”

Bon Bon cocked her head, frowning. “Extra? What do you mean?”

“See for yourself!” Lyra beckoned them over with a hoof. Lapis and Bon Bon exchanged glances, then trotted over to look.

There, just beyond the entrance to the alleyway, was a disorganized pile of extinguished lanterns. They looked just like the ones in the town square, made from wrought-iron and cloudy yellow glass.

“That’s… odd,” Lapis muttered. “Shouldn’t these be lit already?”

Lyra shrugged. Bon Bon didn’t reply, instead turning to examine the front of the nearest building. She seemed to recognize it, and her face grew grim.

“Oh, they should be more than just lit,” she replied, her voice low. “This is Cantering Boulevard.”

Lyra frowned. “Wait, didn’t the Mayor say to light this street?”

Lapis nodded slowly, then reached out a hoof to touch one of the lanterns. “They’re still hot. These were lit a few minutes ago, tops.”

“Which means,” Bon Bon replied, “that somepony put them all out, and hid them here.”

She looked up, the light of Lyra’s horn casting deep shadows across her face. “Somepony wanted Cantering Boulevard to stay dark.”

“Oh, great. Just what we needed,” Lapis muttered, shutting his eyes. Fear, anger and something painful twisted in his stomach, and he felt his mouth twitch. I just had to think things would be easy, huh? Thanks, Murphy.

Then a scream echoed from around the corner of the alleyway.

Lapis’ gut wrenched, and he was halfway down the alley before he realized he’d started galloping. He whipped around the corner, looking down a shadowy side street, just in time to see the pegasus waitress from the Corner Cafe scrambling towards him on her back. She didn’t even look at him, she was busy staring into the darkness beyond Lapis’ vision.
Lyra rounded the corner a second later, and the light of her horn showed the faintest glimpse of something indistinct - a tendril, a wisp, maybe a tentacle? - darting out of sight.

“Lapis, catch!” Bon Bon barked, and Lapis looked over just in time to telekinetically snatch a broom handle out of the air. Bon Bon emerged from the alley a second later with a fluffy pink something grasped in one of her hooves, spinning the object like a flail too rapidly for Lapis to tell what it was.

“Monster,” the waitress gasped, staring at the space where the tendril had been. “Something long and thin- too dark to see, it felt too soft- it grabbed my hoof, it tried to get me, and-!”

Okay. She’s panicking. Nothing too weird here, just handle her like you’d handle Amanda. “Hey. Hey, look at me!” Lapis said, placing a hoof on the pegasus’ shoulder and meeting her gaze. “Look at me. You’re safe now. We’re safe. We’re gonna get you back to the main square, alright? Take a second to catch your breath, and we’ll go. Slow, deep breaths, in through your nose and out through your mouth, can you do that?”

The pegasus nodded, and Lapis smiled. “Good. It’s easy, I promise. In, and out. In… and out. In… out.”

The waitress followed along as best as she could, taking deep, shuddering breaths, and Lapis felt her pulse began to settle under his hoof. “You’re doing great. Take as much time as you need, and then we’ll go.”

“Okay… okay.”

Lapis smiled again, then looked back at where the whatever-it-was had been, holding the broom handle awkwardly at his side, Lyra wrapping the waitress in a hug at once. Bon Bon had stopped spinning the fluffy pink thing, and Lapis could now identify it as a towel wrapped around what looked like a couple of the extra lanterns. He cocked an eyebrow at Bon Bon, and she spared him half a glare before turning back to the wall of darkness outside Lyra’s light.

“Alright, are you ready?” Lyra asked. The waitress nodded, then got back to her hooves, awkwardly shuffling her wings in a way that reminded Lapis of Nikki. Oh yeah, I wonder if she’s woken up at all yet?

As they set off back toward the town square, a high-pitched and vaguely-accented squawk echoed from the forest, followed by a faint, reverberating thud. Lapis cocked his head. Did that happen in the show? …I think that sounded like the sea serpent, maybe? So, I guess that means we’re about two-thirds of the way done. Huh.
That was fast.

“What was that?” asked Lyra.

“Nothing to worry about,” Lapis muttered. “…I mean, whatever it was, it was deep enough inside the Everfree that we don’t need to worry about it. Unless it starts getting closer, or something.”

Bon Bon glared at him, and Lapis blushed. “…Tell you what, I’ll just keep quiet and watch.”

“Please do,” Bon Bon replied.

Lapis nodded, then turned back to watch the shadows behind them. They looked like they were moving, but this wasn’t Lapis’ first rodeo with spookiness - it was his imagination, and he knew it. Still, it’d be a lot harder to keep calm if I were alone…
Like Nikki is right now, if she’s awake. A quiet ache of guilt settled into Lapis’ chest, and he sighed. Yeah, I’ve gotta get away from Bon Bon and Lyra again. Not for too long, just long enough to make sure Nikki’s okay. Can’t have either one of them seeing the inside of my house, though - I told them I had boxes everywhere, but… well, I don’t, and that’ll raise some questions.
Lapis set his jaw, then resumed his watch, his brow furrowing as he tried to come up with a plan.

When they got back to the square, Bon Bon only slowed down long enough to grab and light the two lanterns she’d taken from the pile. She passed one to Lapis, then surprised him by holding the other in one hoof and walking tripedally down the same street they’d embarked down before.
Lapis watched, cocking an eyebrow, as Bon Bon raised the lantern high in one of her front hooves, then stepped forward with her other front hoof - and somehow, didn’t fall over despite having both her front hooves completely off the ground.
…You know what? That’s fine. Lapis pointedly lifted his lamp into the air via telekinesis, then carried on.
The street was just about pitch-black, aside from the fiery light of Lyra’s horn, and the less-intense light from Bon Bon and Lapis’ lanterns. The stars were so dim as to be almost nonexistent, and even the full moon was barely enough to outline most surfaces. The pointed rooves of the Ponyville houses, in this light, suddenly became pointed blotches of pitch-black against the pale spotting of the night sky - they looked, Lapis felt, rather like a row of giant teeth might, if viewed from inside the mouth.

“So where do you think those other three ponies are?” Lapis muttered.

“I don’t know,” Bon Bon said, “but we need to find them fast. Lyra, do you know any spells to locate them?”

“Not unless they’re singing,” Lyra sighed. “Lapis, any sp- …I mean, ideas?”

“Ouch,” Lapis muttered, but he took the opportunity. “Well, I’ve got two. Either we split up to cover more ground, which I don’t like, or we get more ponies searching.” And, if there’s more ponies searching, that means it’ll be harder to notice if I disappear to check on Nikki.

Bon Bon huffed. “There’s no time to organize a formal search party, and besides, that’ll just lead to more ponies panicking.” She took a deep breath, then sighed. “We’re going to head down this road until we’re about fifty paces from the edge of town. Once we’re there, I’m going to circle around clockwise listening for the sound of anypony panicking. Lapis, Lyra, you two stay together and head counterclockwise.”

“Wait, what?” Lapis and Lyra said together.

“I just said that wasn’t a good plan,” Lapis said.

“Bon Bon, what do you think you’re doing?” Lyra added. “It’s just as dangerous for you out there as it is for us!”

“Yes, but in case you haven’t noticed, I can handle it,” Bon Bon replied, turning to stare at them. “We have to split up. It’s the only thing we have time to do, and the two of you will be safer together than either of you would be alone.”

“But what about you, Bon Bon?” Lyra replied, leaning forward, worry plain in how far her ears were folded back. “You’ll be alone! What if the monster comes after you?!”

“If that happens, I’ll yell, and then I’ll kick its tail,” Bon Bon replied, her tone perfectly casual. “And you’ll do the same thing if it comes after you. Got it?”

Oh, this is not happening. “Uh, no, I don’t got it,” he said. “Listen, you and Lyra have been together for a long time. You know each other way better than I know either of you, you’ll have a much better shot at working together if something else happens.”

“And you’ll fare any better by yourself than I will?” Bon Bon asked, cocking an eyebrow.

Bullshitting practice, don’t fail me now. “Maybe not,” Lapis replied, levitating the lantern down by his hip and spinning the broom handle out to his side. “But you’ll definitely fare better with somepony than you would without. I’d be willing to bet that you’ve spent more time working as part of a squad than I have, ergo, you’ll do better with somepony by your side than I would. And as for me…” Lapis paused, trying to come up with something that made sense. “Well, I’m the town repair-pony. I fix things. I know how to keep myself together, too. And besides…”

Lapis paused before he got the last words out. This part might be too much… no, y’know what, she doesn’t look convinced yet. Either I say it and maybe look like an idiot, or I don’t say it and I lose my chance.

Despite his reasoning, Lapis still felt his cheeks growing warm under Bon Bon’s gaze as he spoke. “…Besides, maybe I actually was raised by griffons. And maybe griffons know how to take care of themselves.”

Bon Bon’s eyebrows shot right up - then, to Lapis’ astonishment, she actually seemed to buy it, her ears tucking back as she grimaced and looked awkwardly to the side. Lyra, however, raised her hoof. “Hi, can I talk now? Please?”

Lapis and Bon Bon exchanged looks, then nodded.

“Great! Thanks!” Lyra took a deep breath, then shouted, “NO! No splitting up! Either of you! There’s something scary out there, and we all know it, and nopony is going to try and take it on alone!”

Lapis’ jaw dropped as Lyra leveled a hoof at Bon Bon. “You first. I don’t know what’s gotten into you tonight, Bon Bon, but whatever it is, you’re taking it too far. You’re acting like some guardspony captain out of Canterlot, and you’re not! You run a candy shop, Bon Bon, and I run it with you. I watch you jump up on the counter to get away from spiders - hay, I sweep them outside for you! I’m not about to let you wander off alone just because you decide tonight’s the night to live out one of your Tom Prancy novels!”

“And as for you,” she said, turning to face Lapis, “you’ve already put yourself at enough risk for one night! First you run off alone as soon as this ‘Twilight’ unicorn thinks she has half a plan, then you cast a real, actual Mend-All spell with a wagon-sized pot of oatmeal about to fall on your head, and now this?!” She waved the same accusatory hoof at Lapis, her eyes wide. “I don’t know if you’ve looked at yourself lately, Lapis, but you look about tired enough to drop, raised by griffons or not!”

“No,” Lapis muttered, “that’s just how my face-”

“Oh, horseapples it’s just your face! It’s also your knees, your puffy eyes, and the fact that you’re not casting any magic besides telekinesis.” Lyra pressed a hoof to her barrel. “I know what mana-burn looks like, Lapis. I know what happens if you push it too far. Don’t keep going like this, please, you’ll only hurt yourself!”

Then, finally, Lyra seemed to run out of steam. She sighed, then sat back on the street with a thump, her ears tucked back as she staring at the ground between her sticking-out legs. Even now, she’s sitting like a human, Lapis thought. …And that’s what I notice? Really?
Lapis exchanged a look with Bon Bon. No words were spoken, but they seemed to reach an agreement regardless, because when Lapis sat down beside Lyra, Bon Bon did the same on her other side. Absently, Lapis tried bending one of his knees, and found that they were almost too weak to bend. Oh. Guess fixing those pots really did take it out of me.
Wait. I can just call Nikki from outside of my house.
…Yeah, I’m definitely too tired for this crap.

Bon Bon was first to speak. “Lyra, I… I’m sorry. I was so worried about everypony else in Ponyville that I forgot to stop and think about you and me. I never meant to make you worry about me, Lyra, and I promise I’ll try not to give you anything else to worry about.”

Lyra sniffled, but turned her head and smiled at her friend. Lapis took a deep breath, then said, “…And I’m sorry too. For… well, basically the same thing, plus running myself ragged enough that I might have trouble standing up here in a second.”

Bon Bon looked up sharply at that, but Lapis carried on. “I guess I just got so tired that I started doing stuff without thinking it through first. You’re right, and I’m sorry for not seeing it sooner. I’ll take better care of myself from here on out.”

“We’re all tired,” Lyra giggled, her voice cracking a little. “We’ve stayed up for at least one more hour of night than we were expecting, y’know.”

“Well, I suppose we have,” Bon Bon said, a hesitant grin creeping across her face. “Why don’t we head back to the town square, make sure the missing ponies have come back, and then see if we can catch some sleep?”

Lyra shook her head, to Lapis’ mixed relief and disappointment. “No. We’ve gotta find those ponies. Celestia only knows what kind of trouble they’re in right now.”

“Alright,” Bon Bon said. “Still, it won’t hurt to check the town square first, right?”

Lyra nodded, sniffled again, then stood back up. Lapis stood up soon after, grunting at the effort it took, his legs suddenly burning with the strain of supporting his weight. Oh. Wow. Okay.

Bon Bon took notice, glancing back at Lapis. “Hey, you alright?”

“I’m good,” Lapis grunted. “Should be able to get back to the town square just fine, but after that I think I had better sit down for-”

He paused, confused, as he felt something soft and light wrap around his back left hoof. Then, suddenly, it pulled, and Lapis barely had time to yelp before he was dragged back into the dark. His vision went black as his head hit the ground, and he knew no more.

“…and unless you can get that cash back to us within a week, we’ll have no choice but to involve your parents in the repayment process.”

Lapis’ head was resting on something hard and warm. Wood, if the knothole jutting into his chin was anything to judge by. His jaw was aching, and a spike of hot pain flared through the back of his head with every heartbeat. Wincing, he opened his eyes, but found that it was too dark to figure out where he was. He tried to think, to remember, but it felt like there was fog in his brain - he could remember waking up, and he remembered who he was, but how he got here was a mystery.

“Wha?” he croaked, picking up his head and trying to stand up - then grimacing as fire shot through his legs, and he fell to all fours. For a second, he was confused by the echoing knock his hands made as they hit the ground. Then he remembered he had hooves, and that he was a pony, and the fog in his head washed away as Lapis remembered-

It got me, Lapis realized, his blood running cold. The thing in the shadows.

“Do you understand?” the voice asked again. It was calm, polite, neither cold nor warm. “Eighty thousand, in full, by the end of the week. Or we’ll have to take whatever you have, and your parents will start paying for the rest.”
Lapis frowned, confused, as a shape took form within the shadows, the darkness around him contracting to reveal he was standing inside his own bedroom.
And sharing the space with him was… a pony, a pale-maroon stallion in a suit, sitting on one of his spare chairs with a briefcase before his legs. His gaze was flat, his eyebrows raised, in an expression that might’ve looked like sympathy if not for the words he’d been saying. “I know it’s hard to accept, but those were the terms you signed. There’s nothing you can do,” he continued. “If it wasn’t what you wanted, you should’ve thought of that before you accepted the application.”

Lapis cocked an eyebrow at the apparition. Wait a minute. Is that…

His mouth twitched. It trembled. Then, Lapis could contain it no more, and a cold, humorless laugh shuddered its way out of his throat. His knees shivered, then gave way, but Lapis continued to chuckle even as he fell to a seat.

“Excuse me?” he said, glaring at the apparition of Nightmare Moon’s magic, continuing to smile as his head began to grow hot. “I know it’s your shtick to mess with ponies’ heads, but… what?! Of all the things you could’ve picked to scare me with - fire, claustrophobia, spooky noises, anything with big teeth - you decided that the scariest thing I can think of is defaulting on my student loan debt?!”

Lapis laughed again, even louder than before, and every bit of hysterical stress in him went with it. His gut twisted with fear of the situation he was in, anger at the ridiculousness of it and raw, heart-aching guilt for being able to see something to laugh at in the first place. But he laughed anyway, because the scariest thing this world could throw at him was a unicorn with a tie, and that was just sad.

Finally, Lapis cut himself off, and grinned levelly at the pony behind the desk, shutting out the ache in his back legs as he stood. “Well, guess what? You’re right. It is scary, and I’m terrified of it. Which is why I haven’t stopped working on it since I got here. I’m going to get back to Earth, and when I do, I’ll be bringing enough diamonds with me to deflate the jewelry market. You think there’s nothing I can do? Well, I hate to break it to you, you big cloud of smoke, but there is, and I’m already doing it!” He pointed at the door. “Get the hell out of my house. Or else, I’ll grab a blanket and waft you out-”

“NOOOOOOOOO!” echoed a distant scream from outside, and the next second, a burst of light brighter than the sun flashed through Lapis’ window. It washed directly over Lapis, and he felt the weakness in his legs fade just a little, his Cutie Mark briefly pulsing with warmth against his flank.

Then, the light faded, and Lapis opened his eyes to see that he was alone in the room. The pony with the briefcase had vanished, and in its place was a small, inky blotch of black fog, pooled and writhing on the floor but otherwise immobile.

Lapis took a deep breath, then stepped around the whatever-it-was on the floor and headed for his front door. Was that the Elements just now? Had to be. Then… sunrise should be coming in around thirty seconds or so. He’d done it. He’d survived the night, he was home free. Where was Nikki?

Something behind him hissed, long and slow as steam from a leaky pipe.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Lapis muttered, spinning to face behind himself. “What now-”

The words died in his throat as he saw what was coalescing in his bedroom. The knot of smoke had risen from the floor, and more and more blotches of it were pouring through the window, rushing down from the Everfree and inside Ponyville alleyways, melding with the spherical cloud of shadow right in front of Lapis. As he watched, a slit formed in the shadow, opening to reveal a vertical, blue-green, slit-pupiled eye.

“Nikki, get help!” Lapis had time to yell. Before he could do anything else, the eye of the cloud snapped shut, and a tendril of vapor darted toward his face. It wormed its way into Lapis’ nose, and he made the mistake of gasping, allowing more of the stuff to pour into his mouth. He stumbled back, away from the body of the shadow and into the front room of his shop, then froze as he felt his fear suddenly vanish, snuffed out and replaced by cold anger.
Lapis hesitated, then kicked out at the smoke, realizing that the weakness in his legs was gone entirely. The shadow recoiled, pulling itself back and curling into a corner, shrinking as Lapis gritted his teeth and glared at it.
I feel… good, he realized. Better than ‘good,’ he felt wide awake, his mind as clear and sharp as ice as he stared down at the latest source of his frustration, the shakiness in his legs replaced by a cold, perfect steadiness, an odd blue-green tint coloring the edges of his vision. I could kill that thing myself. I feel like I could grab enough gold and gems to buy an island or two back on Earth… or maybe enough to put my loan company out of business. And why shouldn’t I?

A sudden flapping of wings echoed through the air, and Nikki landed on Lapis’ back, her wing snapping out to slap clean through a tendril of shadow that had been curling up his neck, around the side of his jaw. Lapis coughed, smoke washing out of his mouth and nose, and suddenly the coldness was gone, the tint fading from his vision as his aches and pains returned with a throbbing heat. Wait, what the hell was that?!

The shadow in the corner hissed, shooting another tendril down Lapis’ throat, and he felt his legs growing cold again. Nikki squawked a warning, but Lapis was already moving, wrapping a hoof around the tendril and pulling it from his mouth himself, his foreleg trembling with the effort. The shadow hissed again, trying to lunge forward, but Lapis just barely held it off, something ocurring to him as he held the parasite back.

“I don’t care,” he said, his voice strained, “how much power… you’d give me. I think I know what you did to Nightmare Moon, and I will never bring you back home.”

The shadow screeched, then wrenched its tendril free of Lapis’ grip. Lapis heard the door to his shop opening behind him, then the whatever-it-was twisted like a pony, bucking him right in the barrel. Lapis braced, expecting to crash into the wall-

“Lapis!” shouted a voice, and suddenly a feeling like warm water engulfed him, washing over his body for just a moment before he dropped to the floor, unharmed. A second later, Lyra was standing next to him, glaring at the shadowy thing in his living room, pawing the ground like she was about to charge, the orange glow of her horn ominously bright.

“Lyra?” Lapis said, but then a cream-yellow blur crashed through Lapis’ window, tackling the shadow to the ground in a spray of broken glass. It hissed and screeched, twisting into the shape of a pony as it grappled with a snorting, straining Bon Bon.
Golden sunlight flooded the room, and the shadow screamed like tearing metal as smoke began to pour off its body. It slipped away like a liquid, Bon Bon yelping as her hooves suddenly curled shut around thin air, and darted toward the hallway-

-oh no you don’t-

-thumping to a stop against the floor as Lapis grabbed it by the tail. It turned to look back at him, its single slit-pupiled eye glancing between Lapis and the sun, then it grew wings and flew toward the hallway, Lapis yelling as it dragged him behind, spreading his legs as he was dragged toward the doorway. His hooves hit the doorframe with two solid thunks, and Lapis groaned as his legs began to burn from the strain of holding the nightmare at bay, his shivering knees slowly bending-

“I can’t… hold it!” he said, and for a heartbeat, he was alone, his legs failing beneath him as he crumpled toward the darkness.

And suddenly Bon Bon and Lyra were next to him, grabbing the shadow and pulling it back from the hallway, Lapis finally getting a chance to breathe as he slowly, shudderingly straightened his shaking legs. Even Nikki pitched in, grabbing a wisp of the thing in her claws and flying toward the window, straining as her wings beat with all their strength.

“Together!” Lyra said, her voice clear. “Out the window, on three! One, two, three!”

They heaved, Lapis screaming as he put everything he had into pulling the nightmare into the light, and the shadow screeched in terror as it shot backward over their heads into the sunlight. Lapis fell backward in a daze, watching dimly as the shadow flew out the window and dissolved into wisps of steam, vanishing with a final hiss like water on a stovetop.

For a second, it was all that Lapis could do to lie there and keep from passing out. Then, slowly, he rolled back onto his legs, straining as he stood back up, Bon Bon ducking to wrap one of his forelegs over her shoulder. “Easy,” she said. “Take it slow. You did good work.”

“Thanks,” Lapis mumbled. “You alright?”

“Peachy. Lyra?”

“I’m good!” Lyra panted, waving up from the floor, her voice exhausted. “Just… gimme a second. Might’ve… kinda forgotten to breathe there. Oh, look, the sun’s up, thank Celestia.”

Bon Bon quickly turned to look her over, then nodded. “You’re fine. Alrighty then, so, Lapis?”

Lapis was just awake enough to feel a prickle of unease at the tone of Bon Bon’s voice. “Uh-huh?”

Bon Bon began slowly leading him to the table and the pair of chairs by the broken window of his shop, where he’d been reading the Reference Guide only a few hours earlier. “After you disappeared,” Bon Bon said, “Lyra spent ten minutes telling me all about a little something called mana-burn. You know what that means for you?”

“I get the feeling I’m not going to like it,” Lapis muttered.

“It means,” Bon Bon said, brushing off one of his chairs and pushing him firmly onto it, “that you are going to sit in this chair, and you are going to stay there until you’re ready to go to sleep, and you will do absolutely nothing else otherwise. Is that clear?”

“Whoa, hold up-”

“I said, is that clear, Lapis Print?”

“Okay, I get it, Mom,” Lapis said, raising his free hoof in surrender. “Stay put until naptime. No problem. Just… tell me you found those other ponies, please.”

“Yep, we did,” Lyra said, getting back to her hooves and taking a deep breath. “By the time we had to stop looking for you, they’d all found their way back to the town square. Whatever those smoke-things that Nightmare Moon sent out were, they didn’t seem interested in actually hurting anypony. Just… keeping them scared and in the dark.”

“Except for that last one,” Bon Bon said. “That one… it just felt different. Like Nightmare Moon, but less… directed, more wild. Lapis, what happened to you?”

“Not a lot,” Lapis muttered. “The one that grabbed me knocked me out, and after that it must’ve dragged me here, because this is where I woke up. It tried to show me my worst fear, but… well, that didn’t work. Then the Elements of Harmony went off, and-”

“Wait, that flash of light were those Elements of Harmony thingies?” Lyra asked. “How do you know?”

Lapis hesitated. “Well… I mean, the sun’s up, so it kinda had to be.”

Lyra nodded, but her ears tucked back a little, and Bon Bon fixed him with a pointed, unmoving stare. Lapis felt his ears try to fold back, grimaced, and consciously flicked them back upright before he carried on. “After the Elements went off, something was… different. Before, that thing was the same sparkly-purple smoke as Nightmare Moon’s mane, but… well, you saw how dark it was.”

“Lapis,” Lyra cut in again. “I… I know you’ve been through a lot, and I totally understand if now’s not a good time, but… you knew something about Nightmare Moon, didn’t you?”

Lapis froze. Uh-oh. He was in no state to run, and judging by the look on Bon Bon’s face, she might actually tackle him to the floor if he tried to leave. Nikki didn’t look like she’d be any help, either - she was perched on the table beside them, looking up at Lapis with wide-eyed, worried interest. This… might actually be it.

Lapis sighed, his ears folding back, and this time he didn’t bother to flick them up as he stared down at the table. “What gave it away?” he muttered.

“Whenever Nightmare Moon laughed, you always got this strange look on your face,” Lyra said. “And… well, it seems like you already knew about the Elements of Harmony.”

Lapis took a slow, deep breath, trying to buy himself some time to think. I mean, I could tell them everything, but they’d never believe it. And even if they did, that’d be worse - I’d end up disrupting the entire show, and then any edge I might have is gone.

“The Elements,” Lapis began slowly, “I knew about from a book I’d picked up this- well, I guess it’d be yesterday morning, now. It’s the same book I was reading in the Town Hall, before Nightmare Moon arrived. I read that the Princesses had used them to fix some other big problems, and I was hoping that maybe… maybe somepony with a little more talent than me could find them, and use them to take care of Nightmare Moon. So, when I heard the Princess’ student say she was heading to the library, I galloped over there and got the book into her hooves as quickly as I could. After that… well, you know everything else I said about the Elements.”

“But what about you and Nightmare Moon?” Lyra said. “Lapis, I don’t know what you felt whenever that pony laughed, but the reason we knew where to start looking for you in the first place was because… we heard you laughing, and… and it…”

“It sounded almost exactly like her laughter did,” Bon Bon finished. Lyra’s ears folded back as she looked away in shame, but she nodded. That familiar mix of emotions twisted in Lapis’ gut again, and he grimaced. Y’know, I almost wish you were grilling me on the Elements, instead.

“I… never knew Nightmare Moon,” he admitted. “Last night was the first time I’d ever laid eyes on her, and I’ll be glad if it was the last. But-” Lapis grimaced, his throat trying to close around his next words. He swallowed, then tried again. “Her laugh meant something, and I knew what it was. I recognized it, because- because I’ve meant it myself. I’ve meant it before, and I meant it just now.
“It scares me to say this, but, well, I think Nightmare Moon and I have something in common. And… well, I think whatever took control of Princess Luna, the pony who used to be Nightmare Moon, thought so too. Because it was trying to do the same thing to me, when you and Lyra helped me throw it into the sunlight.”

“So, the Nightmare has been returned to its realm after all?” said a new voice. “That’s quite the relief. Well done, my little ponies.”

The chair opposite Lapis scraped, and Lapis looked up to see that Bon Bon had gotten out of it and sunk into a low bow facing the window. He saw Lyra scrambling to do the same as he turned to look out the shattered window.

Advancing toward them was… well, she was shaped like someone had taken a pony about Lapis’ size, given them proportions and facial features a little closer to those of a real horse, and then made them twice the usual size. Maybe three times. She had a pure-white coat, almost painfully bright to look at, and her mane and tail were shimmering, psychedelic blurs of greens, purples and pinks that reminded Lapis of Aurora Borealis, floating and waving as if moved by a constant invisible breeze. Her Cutie Mark, partially covered by the tip of her folded wing, was an ornate, golden representation of the sun, and perched atop her long, spiraling horn was a simple, jeweled crown.

Lapis felt the rush of adrenaline in his veins, and quickly took a bow himself, almost falling on his face as he got out of his chair. “Your Grace,” he said. Princess Celestia. No way it could be anyone else.

He heard her chuckle. “Goodness, I haven’t heard that one in a while. You may rise, all of you.”

Lapis rose, and found that the Princess was looking directly at him with a regal, amused smile. The Mayor was standing awkwardly at her side, glancing at the ground as if trying to pick the best spot to kneel on.

“So, I understand the three of you have had a busy Summer Sun Celebration Eve?” asked Princess Celestia, her smile the gentle warmth of a sunbeam, her gaze seeming to look directly into Lapis’ soul.

“Uh, certainly not busier than yours, Your Grace,” Lapis replied. “Lyra and Bon Bon here caught the worst of it, though - I was unconscious for a good part of it, so at least I managed to catch some rest.”

“Says the pony who’s been pulling Mend-All spells out of his rump all day long!” Lyra said, shooting Lapis a sudden stern look. She blinked, then grew pale as she remembered that Princess Celestia was there, her ears flattening back against his head. “Um… pardon my Prench, Your Highness.”

“I’ve heard worse,” the Princess chuckled. “Although… multiple Mend-All spells? That’s quite impressive, Mister…”

Uh-oh, Lapis thought as Celestia waited for his name. “Uh, it’s Print, Your Grace. Lapis Print. And fixing things is just my special talent, I learned it at about the same time as telekinesis. But Bon Bon here, well, she runs a candy shop normally, but tonight she did at least a third of the work to keep this town running. And Lyra here did a better job keeping everypony calm than either of us could’ve. Not to mention Nikki over there-” Nikki cooed in surprise at being mentioned, but otherwise kept still- “who’s probably as much a reason as everypony else in this building that the, uh, Nightmare is gone now.”

“I see,” Princess Celestia replied, nodding thoughtfully. “Well, I think the four of you have done Ponyville, and Equestria, a great service by dealing with the creature that had possessed my sister. I had suspected it would search for another pony to latch onto, somepony who had a lot to lose, and greatly feared losing it - desperately enough, perhaps, to accept help from anypony or anything that offered it. That, I think, is what you have in common with Princess Luna.”

“Oh.” Lapis felt his ears flicking back. “You heard that, huh?”

Princess Celestia nodded, not a trace of anger in her expression. “We may be royalty, but that doesn’t make us quite so different from other ponies. Don’t think we would be offended that you see some part of yourself in us, nor that we might begrudge your standing together where my sister fell alone.”

She paused, her ear twitching as if she were listening to something, then spoke again. “You may know that, long ago, Princess Luna ruled over the night as I govern the day, and that she moved the moon as I do the sun. What you may not know is that, as I protect Equestria’s citizens from the worries of the waking world, she guarded them from the dangers of their dreams.
“However, her burden was heavy indeed, and as time wore on, she began to worry she might be unable to protect her little ponies. Then, a creature came forth from a place of darkness and fear, and showed her a vision of the very thing she sought to prevent - all her subjects paralyzed by terror, tormented by the things they couldn’t face alone. It told her that this vision was the future, and offered her its power to aid in stopping it. But I suspect you know the cost of the Nightmare’s aid.”

“My sister fell,” Princess Celestia said, “because she tried to face her darkest fears alone, and lost herself to obsessing over their prevention at any cost. You, Lapis Print, chose to turn to the ponies around you instead of facing your problems alone, and that is why the Nightmare couldn’t claim you. It’s a lesson that many ponies must endure in their lives, one that Princess Luna congratulates you- or would congratulate you for learning, were she here.”

“And she’s alright now? Princess Luna, I mean?” Lapis asked.

Princess Celestia blinked, her eyes briefly widening by the barest sliver of an inch. Then she nodded, her warm smile returning to her face as she giggled. “She’s quite alright, yes. The Elements were able to free her from the Nightmare’s grasp, and I imagine she’ll make a quicker recovery than even she expects.”

Lapis sighed in relief, a knot he hadn’t realized was in his gut twisting loose. “Good. Nob- uh, nopony should have to deal with the Nightmare at all, let alone for as long as she must have.” He blinked, then blanched as he realized what he’d said.

“And nopony will need to fear its return again,” Princess Celestia said, her voice firm but still friendly, a forgiving smile gracing her expression. “Now, much as I would like to stay for the rest of the Summer Sun Celebration, the rest of Equestria is yet unsure of what brought about the events of last night. As such, I must depart for Cloudsdale-”

A sudden crunch from off to the side interrupted the Princess, and she glanced to the side, then chuckled. “Or perhaps Manehattan, as it seems Cloudsdale may already be informed.”

Lapis glanced over, then saw Derpy Hooves emerging from the wreckage of a wagon full of hay, rubbing her head with a hoof as she stretched her wings. She looked exhausted - parts of her mane were sticking out, and her eyelids were sagging so low it was a wonder she could see at all - but the grin on her face was nothing short of triumphant.

“Huh,” Lapis heard Bon Bon mutter, her voice low. “She made it.”

“Of course she did… Uh, thanks, Your Grace. For explaining everything, I mean,” Lapis said, quickly taking another bow.

Again, Princess Celestia chuckled. “Not at all, Lapis Print. I look forward to seeing you again.” Her horn came aglow with golden light, and the shards of Lapis’ window lifted off the floor of his workshop, gently whistling back into place inside their frame - then, with a flash of light and a crackle like bubble wrap, Lapis’ window was as whole as it had ever been, and the Princess’ blurred form was walking away on the other side.

“Wow,” Lyra breathed. “That was… the fastest Mend-All spell I’ve ever seen!”

“No kidding,” Lapis said, his voice hushed. Is… that what it looks like when I do it? No, fixing this up would’ve taken me at least three hours, and she just did it… all at once. In less than five seconds.
Wow. No wonder she’s royalty.

Lapis tried to imagine what the process of what fixing the window would’ve been like for him, and was instantly rewarded with a throbbing headache. He winced, and Bon Bon took notice. “And speaking of ponies who need to recuperate…”

“Yeah, some bed rest sounds pretty good right now,” Lapis replied, wincing and raising a hoof to his head. “You guys better get some sleep too, I’m sure you’re just as bad as I am.”

“We’re getting you home first,” Lyra said, rising to her hooves with a yawn. “Where is your house, anyway?”

“This is it,” Lapis muttered, stifling a yawn of his own, rising from his feet and gesturing toward the hallway. “Seriously, my bedroom is just back there, I can walk fifteen steps to get there just fine.”

“Oh,” Lyra replied. “Huh. Well, it’s really nice! I love the window!”

“Yeah, me too, that’s why I put the table and chairs there,” Lapis said.

Bon Bon blushed. “Well… I’m glad the Princess fixed it, then.”

“You did what you had to do, and besides, I would’ve repaired it in like, a day,” Lapis yawned, waving a dismissive hoof. “Anyway, uh… thanks. Like, for real, you saved my sorry rump. I don’t have a clue how I’m going to pay you back.”

“Start by getting some bed rest,” Bon Bon said. “And maybe follow it up by letting us help you unpack… where is all your stuff, anyway?”

“Don’t have any,” Lapis muttered, scrubbing one of his eyes. God, I’m about to drop, huh? “Kinda moved here in a hurry. Working on it.”

“Ooooh,” Lyra said, nodding as if she’d just realized something. Lapis frowned over at her, but he was too tired to really care about what was going on. “Well… I guess we’ll let you get some sleep, then. C’mon, Bon Bon, we’re tired too, let’s go!”

“Wha-” Bon Bon began, but Lyra was already pushing her out the door. “See you around, Lapis!”

“See you,” Lapis replied, waving as Lyra shut the door. He yawned again as Nikki flew over onto his back, turning and heading for his bedroom. Wonder what that was about. …Eh.

Lapis flopped onto his bed with all the grace of a fish on land, too tired even to pull the blankets over himself as he rolled onto his back, Nikki perching on his sidetable. He glanced at the pigeon, and a twinge of guilt plucked at his chest.

“Hey, thank you too,” Lapis said, looking over at Nikki. “I’m sorry I just kinda… left you in here, through almost all of last night. You saved me from that thing at least twice today, and I’m gonna pay you back. Tomorrow, I’m getting you a bag of birdseed bigger than I am.”

Nikki smirked, making an aw-shucks sort of gesture with her wing, then yawned and nestled down on the nightstand. Lapis grinned, rolling his eyes, then settled back into bed. Finally. I can rest for a while. I don’t need to worry about the protagonists, or the script, or getting the attention of any important ponies…
…like the Princess…
…wait, did she say she “looked forward to seeing me again?!”

Lapis sat bolt upright, his eyes snapping open. “Shit. Shit, shit, shit, shit!”

Something light and fluffy smacked against his front hoof with a whap. Lapis looked down, surprised, and saw Nikki glaring up at him with one open eye, folding the wing she’d just slapped him with. She pointed back toward his pillow with one wing, then pointedly shut her eyes and went back to sleep.

“…Tomorrow,” Lapis agreed. He nodded, leaning back, and was out before he hit the pillow.

Princess Celestia was sitting at her writing desk, calmly composing a set of letters - one for every small town and village in Equestria. She’d already visited all the larger cities personally, and would make appointments to visit the remaining towns over the course of the next week. It would add quite the delay to the tax reform she’d been planning, of course, but some things were more important.

For example, her dear sister, Princess Luna. She was sitting on a cushion by the window, staring out at the towering skyline of Canterlot with a queer look of melancholy on her face. Her eyes traced the peaks and points of the unfamiliar towers and rooftops, and yet she barely even seemed to see them.

“Sister,” she asked, her voice barely above a whisper. “How can we… ever hope to take up the burden of dreams again, now that we have failed so drastically?”

“Whatever do you mean?” Princess Celestia asked, looking up from her writing.

“Our… no, thy little ponies,” Luna said, still staring out the window. “The only princess they have ever known is thee, Sister. Our name is all but forgotten, overwritten by the monster’s title we earned by our shortsightedness. Our duties are assumed null, our moon moved by your horn, our evening sky feared more than e’er before. How…” She placed a hoof against the glass of the window, staring at her own uncertain expression. “How can we pretend such a right to their trust, as to tread into their dreams again? How can we hope to help thy ponies stand against their fears, when we ourselves could not withstand our own?”

Celestia set her quill aside. “My dear Luna, do you remember why you took up the duty of facing dreams?”

“We do, Sister,” Luna replied, looking over at Celestia again. “Your nightmares have not returned?”

“No,” Princess Celestia replied, smiling. “They have not. Not only because of your help in confronting my own Nightmares, but because you guided me to seek out aid. You saw the Mayor of Ponyville, didn’t you?”

Luna didn’t chuckle, but a smile flickered briefly on her face. “We did, yes. She seemed… not what we expected thee to approve of in the office of a Mayor.”

“No, she is not,” Celestia replied. “And yet Ponyville failed to reduce itself to rubble in the absence of my guiding hooves. Do you think I would’ve believed such a thing was possible, if you hadn’t taught me to share my responsibility in the first place?”

“Perhaps not,” Princess Luna said, a frown slowly dawning on her brow. “Sister, if you are suggesting we delegate our duties… we fear the books that teach our arts crumbled to mold centuries ago.”

“Then perhaps you should take students,” Princess Celestia replied. “I have done much the same. I can’t say all of my students were successful, but many are. My current protege, for example, is quite promising.”

“She who used the Elements of Harmony upon us,” Princess Luna replied. “We are acquainted, yes. Dost thou mean to… someday…”

Princess Celestia paused, staring into the distance. “Perhaps,” she whispered. “Someday. But for now, I am content to help her learn at her own pace, and to force no more responsibility upon her than what she seeks out herself. I find that she takes quite enough.”

Luna nodded. “We… we fear, sister, that thy ponies would not learn from us. That they would hear our name, and see only the monster that sought to take them from thee, and to take the daylight from themselves.”
She sniffled, blinking rapidly as she looked down at her own hooves. “We fear… that we have earned nothing less than their fear. Their hatred. And that… that to seek to restore their trust would be an act more monstrous yet. That exposing them once to the danger we represent unknowingly may be partially excused by our ignorance, but that to take them into our hooves again, with full knowledge of the atrocities we are capable of committing…”

Her voice caught briefly, and Celestia rose from her desk, walking to sit beside her sister and folding her own wing across Luna’s back.

“You won’t need to restore my trust in you, Luna,” she said. “You never lost it. Not for a moment.”

Luna sniffed again. She coughed. Then, slowly, she broke down sobbing at last, turning to embrace Celestia, her dark wing unfolding around Celestia’s back as she buried her face in Celestia’s barrel.
“We… missed you so, Sister,” Luna choked out.

“And we missed you,” Celestia replied, feeling her own vision blur as she shut her eyes.

From atop the writing desk, a set of fifty letters awaited Princess Celestia’s attention, each a village full of a hundred ponies or more who revered her as a goddess. From beneath them sat a tangle of specifications, guidelines, and stipulations as tangled as a thicket of thorns, which her country would need her to untangle before the next recession, and not far outside these doors a dozen nobles or more were demanding an explanation for the unexpected delay in the sunrise.

They could wait. They would still be there tomorrow, she was sure of it.

Today, Celestia had her sister back.

Today, Luna had come home.

Author's Note

Three things about the actual content so far:

First off, the chapter naming is deliberate. And no, I'm not going to change it.

Second: yeah, this chapter is why I included the "oh-by-the-way-I-might-be-biased-about-edginess" warning. Though, I might just not be clear on my terminology - is this technically angst? Grunge? Emo? I'm not sure, what's the word for "featuring characters who have poor mental health without including gratuitous violence/perversion in overzealous detail, or portraying constant anger at everyone and everything in the universe as a livable default state of existence?"

Third: if you've gotten to this point by now, hopefully you've decided there's a slight chance I care about at least some of the characters that aren't Blue McFixyhorn. That's because this is in fact the impression I'm trying to give off. Here, I've memorized some random trivia to prove it:
- Bon Bon, or should I say Sweetie Drops, is canonically a secret agent for a monster-hunting organization run out of Canterlot, living a double identity in Ponyville. I'm bringing this up now because, while it explains most of her behavior, she doesn't tell Lyra about it until, like, season five or something. It's therefore very unlikely that Lapis will get told about it anytime soon, which makes it equally unlikely that the readers would otherwise find out.
- With the exception of two scenes involving Pinkie Pie, every line spoken by the Mane 6 is exactly as written in the episodes of the show. This involved more pausing and rewinding than I'm proud to admit.
- The "Nightmare" creature that was parasitically attached to Princess Luna to create Nightmare Moon is... kinda canon? Depends on whether you want to count the IDW comics or not, which is totally up to you - I'm just using them as inspiration. Anyway, preying on your worst fears is in fact something they do in those comics, so I looked at that and thought, "Huh. Maybe Luna didn't become Nightmare Moon out of envy. Maybe... ruthless desperation to protect ponies from fear. Maybe she was tricked into believing that the only way she could truly win against the Nightmares was by forcing ponies to face their fears, alone, continually, until they overcame them. Because that's what she did, right? She faced her fears alone and won, right? And that's why she's stronger now, right?"
- Derpy Hooves. I spent a good hour or so reading into the details of the Derpy-Hooves vs. Ditzy-Doo name debate, and eventually just decided to stick with calling her Derpy Hooves. This is because it is now the year 2022, and the cringe that therefore results from anything involving the word "derp" should hopefully distract readers from the fact that I couldn't find out whether Derpy actually has family in Cloudsdale, and I just liked her enough to give her an in-chapter subplot.

Also, a brief introduction to the OCs (besides Lapis):

Hot Cocoa, the pegasus waitress from the Corner Cafe. She makes a killer mocha if you like whipped cream, and she'll give you a funny look if you don't. When her friends ask her for "the good stuff," she adds cinnamon and a just a pinch of chili powder.
Yellow Petal, the flower seed salespony from Cantering Boulevard. She came up with the snack bags herself, which sold better during the Celebration than all of her big bags combined. She's very proud, and is looking to expand into larger bags next year.
Nikki the pigeon. She's a normal Ponyville pigeon, who took an interest in Lapis the first time she saw him fixing a roof. Lapis attempted to name her directly after Nikola Tesla (as he didn't know the exact details of good ol' Nick's pigeon obsession), and got himself slapped for his trouble. Later, Nikki helped Lapis find the secret tinkering workshop in his basement, but we'll get into the details of that one next time - but that's why Lapis bought her the bag of birdseed during the opening scene.

Hoki, that's all I've got time for in this note. Thanks for reading, and I'll see you in the next one!

Episode III: The Griffon, Brushed Off

It was Lapis Print’s first day on the job, and he still wasn’t sure he was used to being a pony.

For one thing, when he’d woken up that morning, he’d fallen off the bed after trying to grab his bedpost with fingertips he no longer possessed. For another, he’d put a dent in his only cutting board after getting a little too enthusiastic chopping some mushrooms for his omelet via magic. The sound of his hooves clip-clopping on his wood floor was as jarring as firecrackers going off, and he still wasn’t sure why he had a gray streak in his mane - he was barely twenty, that hair color had no business on his head.

Still, he had to eat, and that meant he had to buy food. And that meant he had work to do. So, he pulled the three requests he’d gotten so far off his notice board, tucked them into his saddlebags, and was just about to leave when he glanced at the closet door.

His eyes narrowed. It was strange, but for some reason, the closet behind the counter just felt… off, somehow. Lapis wanted to give it a more thorough investigation, but he had jobs to do.

Lapis nodded, taking a deep breath and turning to face the front door. “Right. Jobs now, ominous closet later.” Then, he pushed the door open, and stepped into his first day of work in Ponyville…

…Lapis arrived back at his shop with Nikki on his shoulder. She flew in as soon as he opened the shop door, much to his surprise, then settled down on Lapis’ counter. He’d been expecting her to head for the hills after he’d fixed that first thatched roof, but for some reason she’d stuck around.

“So, what brings you here?” Lapis asked the pigeon.

Nikki shrugged in response, and Lapis was left with no way of continuing the conversation - so, he trotted over to the notice board, checked it for new jobs and found it empty, then cast a wary look at the closet door. He needed to restock the basket of slips, but…

Slowly, Lapis pushed the door open. The room beyond was, plain and simple, a closet. There wasn’t anything special about it - it was square, it had shelves, and on the wall to his right it had a tool rack. Lapis looked around, trying to figure out what it was about the closet that made him suspicious - but for the life of him, he just couldn’t put his finger on it.

Then again, he thought, it’s hard to put a finger on anything, lately.

He rolled his eyes, then levitated a sheaf of notices out of one of the boxes, stepping out of the closet as Nikki flew inside past him. “Careful in there,” he called over his shoulder as he made his way out the front door.

When he re-entered the shop a second later, it was to see Nikki emerging from the closet - on foot, this time. She looked right up at him and let out an urgent coo.

“What is it?” Lapis asked. “You notice anything?”

Nikki nodded. She walked to the corner of the space behind the counter, then walked along the wall that the closet shared with the main room, taking a quick, pattering series of steps along the long edge of the rectangular space. Then, she turned and flew into the closet, where she walked along the same wall from the other side.

Lapis raised an eyebrow. “What… are you doing?”

Nikki rolled her eyes, then flew back out of the closet and repeated the process. This time, she went more slowly, glancing back at Lapis as if expecting to see comprehension on his face. She finished walking the length of the closet wall, then turned and gave him a distinct “are-you-stupid” look, one that Lapis had previously thought was unique to people and cats.

“…Yeah, I’ve still got nothing,” Lapis said.

Nikki scowled, then took off, her wing smacking into Lapis’ muzzle as she flew past his face. She landed at the corner of the main room’s wall again, and stomped her way slowly and deliberately down the length of the wall. Her scaled feet made tiny, regular clicks as they came down, distinct enough that Lapis could count the steps - which he did, if only because he couldn’t think of anything else to do. Ninety-six steps, of about an inch long.

Then, Nikki flew back to the closet-side of the wall and clicked her way down its length. One-two-three-four-five-six… all the way up to…

“Sixty?” Lapis muttered. But… she’d gotten to ninety-six on the counter’s side of the wall. He walked up to the doorframe, looking at the rectangular space behind the counter, and then at the square floorspace of the closet. Rectangle… square. Rectangle… square. Then the penny dropped.

“This closet… is smaller than it should be,” Lapis muttered, and he turned to regard the wall with the tool rack.

“There’s something behind that wall, isn’t there?”

Under what some residents would tentatively describe as “normal circumstances,” Ponyville’s streets were pretty tidy. Sure, most of them were either made of dirt or of dirty flagstone, but you weren’t likely to trip over anything unless you dropped it in front of yourself. And even then, somepony else would usually stick out a hoof to stop you from falling on your face.

It was decidedly abnormal, Lapis knew, to have so much pottery on the ground that every other step was met by the musical crunch of breaking clay. It was also decidedly abnormal to have a herd of rabbits rampaging through town, devouring every flowerbed, rosebush, and potted plant in their path. And yet here he was, staring down the street just outside his shop, his mouth wide open as he gawked at the aftermath of the most damaging disaster to hit Ponyville in a decade: Hurricane Bunny. Courtesy, or so he heard, of one Applejack Apple - friend to Twilight Sparkle, and bearer of an Element of Harmony.

Which meant that all would be forgiven, no fines would be leveled, and no help in cleaning up would be expected. That left the duty of picking up the pieces to the citizens of Ponyville - and sure enough, a few ponies were already sweeping portions of the street in front of their house, but most were still staring forlornly at what remained of their gardens. Lapis hadn’t thought to plant anything, so his property had mostly been spared; even still, the bottom of his doorframe had been gnawed into a pile of splinters, and tiny, dusty footprints covered his doormat.

Lapis sighed, then lit his horn, picking up the largest pieces of his doorframe and putting them back into place one at a time, each piece joining with the rest in a small, bright flash of light. Maybe I should install a fence, or something? He snorted, smirking. Nah, that’d just be one more thing to chew up. I wonder if they’ve invented animal-repellant spray here? … No, it’d probably scare off Nikki, too. Huh. Looks like the bunnies actually ate some of the doorframe. If I want to make it look nice again, I’ll end up needing some sawdust and wood glue.

Lapis paused, cocking his head as a disturbing thought occurred to him. Wait. Isn’t glue made from…?
Okay, yeah, let’s maybe just never mention glue ever again. Just in case. He shivered, then turned around.

Lapis froze in place, his eyes widening as he took in the small crowd that had gathered behind him while he was working. A good ten or twenty of the town’s pastel ponies were standing behind him, peering over each others’ shoulders, the ponies in front straining to keep a respectful distance as those behind struggled to get a good look. All of them seemed to be unicorns, and as he turned to look, they all froze in place, their eyes widening as they glanced back and forth between Lapis and each other.

For a single, bizarre second, Lapis thought they’d somehow heard him thinking about glue, and his heart skipped a beat before he remembered that wasn’t possible. Then, one of the ponies - a green-coated stallion with a sack of dirt for a Cutie Mark - raised a hoof. “Um, excuse me, but… were those Mend-All spells you were just using?”

Oh, it’s this again. Lapis sighed, took a deep breath, and flicked his ears back upright. “Yeah, those were Mend-All spells. My name’s Lapis Print, I’m Ponyville’s new repair-pony, and I’ve always had a special talent for Mend-Alls.” Lapis had given this speech a few dozen times already - while he hadn’t had enough time to actually read the book on Mend-All spells he’d “loaned” from the Golden Oak, the reactions of the unicorns who saw him in action were starting to give him the impression that, whatever Mend-Alls were, they were a big deal.

The stallion who’d spoken nodded, a smile returning to his face. “Are you taking orders right now?”

“Yep.” Lapis gestured to the corkboard on the front wall of his shop. “Anything that’s broken, as long as you’ve still got all the pieces. Write your name, address, and what item needs fixed on one of those slips, then tack it to the corkboard and I’ll get around to it as soon as I can.”

“Thanks!” the stallion said. He turned toward the corkboard and started toward it at a casual walk.

Then another of the ponies in the crowd did the same, at a slightly faster walk.

The next three ponies approached the corkboard at a trot. The rest of the crowd exchanged glances, then darted toward Lapis’ corkboard at a full gallop, several arguments quickly developing as the ponies jostled against each other to get order slips. Lapis took a step back in surprise, his eyes widening and his ears tucking back as the ponies started shouting over each other.

Yeah, today’s gonna be a long day.

It turned out, Lapis was right. He didn’t get a chance to get back into his shop until six hours later, by which time the sun had been down for at least an hour, and he still had half the orders on the notice board to take care of.
Lapis locked the door behind himself, walked straight to his bed, and flopped down onto it face-first with a groan. I don’t think I’ve been this tired since the Summer Sun Celebration.

That had been a week ago, now, and a little more than that since Lapis and Nikki had discovered the false wall in his closet. Lapis had yet to see hide or hair of Princess Celestia, and though he’d shared a few breakfasts with Lyra and Bon-Bon, all parties involved had so far been too busy to actually hang out. Way, way too busy, in Lapis’ case.

Lapis rolled onto his back and stared up at the ceiling. So busy, I haven’t had a chance to work on getting back home.
Home… I just wanna sleep. Can’t I just sleep, please? Let things fix themselves tomorrow?

Unfortunately, that’d been his strategy for the last week, and it hadn’t worked at all. If Lapis wanted to get back home, then his normally low tolerance for putting in actual effort just wasn’t going to cut it.
So, grimacing, Lapis rolled out of bed, splashed some water on his face, and went back into the front room of his shop. Then, after glancing out the window to make sure nopony was watching, he opened up the closet behind the counter and stepped inside, closing it behind himself.
There were, as it turns out, two features of this closet would leave a pony scratching their heads at the room. As Nikki had discovered, the room was smaller than it should’ve been - and as for the tool rack, why would a repair-pony need a fireman’s axe?

Eventually, Lapis had discovered the fireman’s axe wasn’t really a tool at all; rather, it was a cleverly disguised handle. And the room was smaller than it should’ve been because the wall with the tool rack…

Is actually a door, Lapis thought, turning the axe and pulling the door open. Beyond was a narrow, steep staircase, sloping down into a brightly-lit stone basement. Whoever had build the secret door had put a lot of engineering effort into this closet - Lapis hadn’t had time to investigate the details, but as long as the secret door was open, the regular door to the closet would stick shut - blocked, he suspected, by some latch underneath the floorboards.

Lapis headed down the staircase and into the basement, shaking his head in amazement as he took in the room for the third time. Whatever pony had lived in this house before Lapis, they’d used their mysterious secret basement to set up and maintain what looked an awful lot like a machining shop. There was a grindstone and a rotary wire brush, a large, clean workbench, and something that looked a lot like a forge - complete with an anvil, a large metal bucket, and a rack of hammers, tongs, and other assorted tools. It wasn’t a big basement, but it felt open - the center of the room had been kept studiously clean, and the workbenches and tools were all pressed against the dully-gleaming gray stone of the walls, so that there was no need to step around anything you hadn’t put there yourself. Above, the ceiling was shaped almost like a wide, upside-down funnel, which looked as if it would channel smoke to the hole in the center of the roof - which, Nikki had discovered, led to a chimney outside.

Lapis stared up at the chimney-hole for a moment, then turned and walked to the workbench. To one side of it was an old, empty notebook - the edges of its pages were worn and yellow, but the book was still usable. The rest of the bench was clear, though it bore the scratches and dents that were the mark of any well-loved workspace.

I know exactly one thing about this room, Lapis thought, sitting back on his rump and staring around it. Whoever made it, they knew what they were doing. What I don’t know is why they did it. Why would some pony decide to set up a whole blacksmith’s shop, complete with ventilation, inside a hidden basement in their house?

“Who lived here?” Lapis muttered.

The words, though quiet, seemed to echo in the small space, returning to his ears as fragmented whispers. No answers were forthcoming, so, with a sigh, Lapis picked up the stack of books he’d taken from the Golden Oak, set them on the workbench, and glared down at their titles, which refused to yield any new information:

The Horn is Quicker Than the Carriage: Transportation for the Time-Pressed Unicorn

Shape-Shifting and Other Ways of Escaping the Sordid

The Totaled Theories of Harmonick Resonance, and Their Applickation to Mending the Otherwise Irreparable

He’d tried reading beyond the titles multiple times now, and found that they all assumed the reader already had a grasp of several fundamentals of magic - an understanding that Lapis didn’t have. Lyra had recommended several beginner’s guidebooks to Lapis, but the problem with those guidebooks was that they were inside the Golden Oak Library - which, as of a week ago, was home to one Twilight Sparkle. And Lapis absolutely could not get involved with Twilight Sparkle or her friends, or else he could kiss his time for research goodbye.

So, Lapis cracked open the book on magical transportation, flipped to the chapter on teleportation spells, and set to reading. The first sentence was all it took to give him the impression that he wouldn’t learn a thing tonight, but he read it anyway.
Not like there’s anything else I could do.

…Huh.
Or is there?

Sometimes, it paid to know a pigeon.

The morning after he’d decided to work on getting home again, Lapis asked Nikki to keep an eye on the Golden Oak, and to let him know if it looked like Twilight would be out for a long period of time. Then, he went about business as usual - or, well, he started cleaning up after the Bunny Incident as quickly as he could.

Lapis had finished up with the “B-day” requests by afternoon the following day, and was headed back down Cantering Boulevard to pick up whatever other slips had accumulated at his workshop when he spotted a problem.
Rainbow Dash was standing in front of one of the shops. She looked slightly more ruffled than usual, with short bits of straw sticking out of her mane as she apologized to an amused-looking Earth-pony mare through an open window.
Lapis glanced at the roof of the building, and wasn’t surprised to see a pegasus-shaped crater in the store’s thatched roof. Cleaning up the aftermath of Rainbow’s rooftop “landings” represented about a sixth of Lapis’ job. If Rainbow were already up and away, he’d offer to take a request slip for the storeowner - but, well, there she was.
Detour time. Lapis hung a right, slipping through an alley, and emerged onto a side street - but when he rounded the corner, there was an odd creature leaning up against one of the store walls.

It looked like someone had taken the head and plumage of an extra-large, moody-looking bald eagle (white head feathers, hooked yellow beak, brown everything else) and attached it to an animal with the general body plan of a lion. It had wings on its back - brown to match its body feathers - and its feet were mismatched: the front half had the yellow, clawed talons of an eagle while the back half had the padded paws of a lion. It looked bored, or maybe impatient, staring idly up at the sky as it scratched a lazy circle in the dirt.
Lapis went on guard at once, eyeing the creature warily as he started walking past it. Is that a griffon? Aren’t they carnivores or something? Might be aggressive, I’d probably better avoid-

The griffon turned to glance at Lapis through half-lidded yellow eyes, then nodded upward, speaking in a rough, high voice. “’Sup.”

Oh. “’Sup,” Lapis said, returning the griffon’s nod, then setting off down the road at his normal pace. Huh. Well, that was easy.

Not long after, he turned onto his street to see Lyra and Bon-Bon standing out in front of his house, supporting between them a long, narrow cylinder of what looked like dark green cloth. They looked up as he approached, and Lyra offered a cheerful grin and a wave as he started toward them, propping herself and the rug against his front door.

“What’re you two doing out here?” Lapis said, once he got within earshot of the pair.

“Well, I was cleaning out my closet,” Bon Bon said, “and I found this rug tucked away in the back. Lyra and I don’t have room for it in our house anymore-”

“And besides, it’s totally the wrong color scheme for our decor!”

“…And that,” Bon Bon finished. “So, we decided to drop by and see if you wanted it.”

Lapis blinked, then grinned, taking in the rug. “Oh, wow. Uh, yeah, it’ll do pretty nicely for the front room. Here, let me get the door real quick…”

He opened the door, and Lyra fell through the open doorway with a yelp, the rug following her into Lapis’ shop shortly afterward. “Oh. Whoops.”

“I’m okay!” Lyra wheezed, sticking a hoof out from beneath the rolled-up rug. “Just… need a little help getting this thing off me.”

Bon Bon gave the rug a firm nudge with one hoof, and it unrolled to the right, Lyra sitting up just in time to watch the last few inches slap flush against the wooden floor. “Hey! It really does work with the giant window!”

“Should help keep this place from echoing so much, too,” Bon Bon added, scuffing the rug with her hoof. “You like it?”

Lapis gave the unrolled rug a second look. It wasn’t quite a rectangle - its corners had been trimmed at an angle, so that it was technically an octagon - but it left a margin of about three feet to every side, meaning Lapis didn’t have to move his table and chairs. It had trim of a slightly different color, too - a lighter green, maybe with a bit of yellow to it, that was just bright enough to add some contrast without being garish.

“Yeah,” Lapis said, nodding as a smile dawned on his face. “I do.” He stared for another few seconds, then shook himself and turned to his guests. “So, cleaning house, are we?”

“Yep,” Bon Bon replied. “You wouldn’t believe how much dusting we’ve had to do, though.”

“I can guess,” Lapis said, looking over his house. “When I moved into this place, there was so much of the stuff on the ground, you’d almost think it was carpet. At least you got the rug cleaned out, though.”

“Yeah!” Lyra said, grinning as her ears tucked themselves back. “We totally did! Had to, um, beat it up with a broom handle! Both of us. At once.”

“…With the same broom handle?” Lapis asked, cocking an eyebrow.

“N-no, of course not! We, uh, actually own two broo-” Lyra started, before Bon Bon stuffed a hoof over her mouth. “What she means is that she held the rug upright, and I beat it with the broomstick.”

“Oh, okay,” Lapis said. Bullshit, he thought. “So, do you have the house-cleaning situation under control over there, or could you use a helping… hoof?”

“Oh, we just finished for today,” Lyra added, pulling Bon Bon’s hoof down from her face. “But we might drop by with more stuff later on, if we find anything nice!”

“Well, alright,” Lapis said. “Go ahead and just leave it outside the door if I’m not here - as long as it isn’t pink or fluffy, I’ll take whatever I can get.”

“Perfect,” Bon Bon replied, smiling as she turned to head out the door, dragging Lyra behind her. “We’ve got plenty, so you’d better be ready to fill up your spare rooms.”

“And feel free to drop by if you need help moving anything!” Lyra called out, sticking her head through the doorframe. “See you later, bye!”

“See you two around!” Lapis called back, as Bon Bon got Lyra out the door with a final tug. He shut the door, then turned to look at the rug again. Tentatively, he looked around, then lowered his head and scuffed it with his hoof.
The texture was soft, and only slightly fluffy, but it was definitely warmer than the floor already. Lapis gently brought his hoof down as if he was taking a step, and sure enough, the rug did an excellent job of silencing his hoofsteps.
The smile returned onto Lapis’ face as he raised his head back up, then stepped fully onto the wool. He briefly jogged in place, relishing how the padded surface muffled the sound of his hooves, then stopped, satisfied.
He’d never owned a rug before.

Aside from some deafening shrieking noise coming from near the Brookway Bridge later in the afternoon, the rest of the day was uneventful. Halfway through the following day, however, Lapis was going down the main road when he heard a coo. He looked up just in time to see Nikki land on his back.
“Go-time?” he asked.
Nikki nodded in reply, smirking as Lapis gave her a bag of mixed seeds from his saddlebag. She grabbed it and took to the skies as Lapis changed directions, heading straight for the Golden Oak.

Alright, he thought, let’s go over this one more time. What’s the plan?
Priority One: Get in, check for any of the guidebooks Lyra recommended, get them, get out.
Priority Two: If it looks like I’ve got time, snoop around a little and make sure Twilight isn’t onto me. Which… she shouldn’t be, but it never hurts to check. At most-

“’Sup.”

“’Sup,” Lapis replied.

-At most, she’s noticed that one of the books I borrowed is missing. Even that’s not a big deal, it just means I’ve gotta slip it through the return slot sometime soon.
Almost there now, Lapis thought, entering the clearing that surrounded the Golden Oak and checking his saddlebags with magic. Supply check time.
Forged order slip? Check.
Tools consistent with forged order slip? Check.
Emergency Anti-Pinkie Mask? Check.
Let’s do this.

Lapis set his jaw, then pushed open the door to the Golden Oak. The bell above the door jingled cheerily as he made his way inside and closed the door.

Sure enough, Nikki’s tip had been good - the Golden Oak was, for the moment, deserted. Although, Twilight’s definitely spruced up the place since I was last in here, Lapis thought, taking a moment to notice the complete lack of dust, the multitude of candles and iron-framed oil lanterns, and the new curtains on the windows.

No time. Where’s the guidebooks? Lapis checked the shelves where he’d last searched for magic, and was pleased to find that - whatever organizational system had been in place before - Twilight hadn’t changed it. Okay. Lyra recommended The Fun-damentals of Spellcasting and Magic for Dummies. Let’s start with the F’s.

Lapis started scanning the shelf, pausing only momentarily to glare at The Elements of Harmony - A Reference Guide, the brass bindings of which glimmered almost cheerfully in the lanternlight. He found the The Fun-damentals almost immediately afterward: a substantial, friendly-looking volume bound in dark green canvas, with a small illustration of a grinning unicorn on the spine. It was heavier than he’d expected in his saddlebag, and Lapis ended up tugging on the strap across his back as he started looking for Magic for Dummies.

He ended up not being able to find it, and so turned toward the door - only to stop when he saw the notice that had been tacked to the adjacent wall.

“Wanted Books - Listed in catalog, but not found in library or check-out records,” Lapis mumbled, his face slackening. “The Horn is Quicker Than the Carriage, Shape-Shifting and Other Ways of Escaping the Sordid, The Totaled Theories of Harmonick Resonance. Reward of… 75 bits a book, representing 50% of the fines to be levied at the responsible pony?!”

…Well, so much for the worst-case scenario. Lapis grimaced, pulling the book out of his saddlebags, then looked between the poster and the cover. How does she plan on levying the fines? Does she have some kind of… detective spell, or something she can cast on the books to see who’s touched them? Can she even lay out fines to begin with - no, of course she can, she’s the Princess’ student. Wait - is she like a federal officer? Is this a federal crime?! Am I a felon?!

“Shit,” Lapis muttered, his eyes wide, his ears flopping back against his head. Okay. New plan, fast. Can’t take the book out of the library, or else that’s just more… whatever-crime-this-is… on my head. C’mon, think…

He spotted a spare quill, an inkwell, and a roll of parchment sitting on a nearby desk, and lunged toward them almost at once, spreading the book open to the table of contents - and then shaking his head. No, I don’t have time to skim the whole thing. Just the few big keywords that keep coming up… here’s hoping this thing has a glossary and an index.

Flipping to the back revealed that, luckily, it had both. Lapis briefly considered his options, then decided to focus on the word that had come up most often: “starswirls.” He pulled a sheet of parchment over and frantically copied down the definition-

the low-level magical field generated around a pony’s hoof which enables them to “grip” light objects via thaumic pressure differential

-before jumping over to the item of next highest priority on his list: “accord.” Probably should’ve done that one first, keep it in alphabetical order, but whatever. He flipped to the glossary, only to find the phrase See Chapter Forty-Six staring back up at him. Oh. Helpful.

Lapis flipped back to the table of contents, then all the way to the very last chapter of the book, where he quickly skimmed to the end of the introductory paragraph before he started copying down.

“This accordant conduciveness, the emotional state of a pony as they cast a spell, is one of the most surefire predictors of a spell’s likelihood to achieve the intended effects - whether it’ll be in Harmony with the caster’s will, or instead sow Discord. If you’re sure your friend is going to love the fireworks you’ve bought, and you’re excited to watch their face light up, then your Candle-Flame Casting won’t light anything but the fuse, every time. But if you’re only casting the spell to distract them from a mess you’ve caused, and you’re worried they’ll be upset with you if they find out what’s really going on… well, it’s a good idea to have a bucket of water ready.”

Lapis blinked. …So, honest intentions good, secrecy bad? That explains the low crime rate around here, but it doesn’t bode well for me.

“…still can’t believe she would just shove you out of the way like that!”

Lapis froze, cocking his ear as he recognized Twilight’s voice approaching the front door. Time to go.

“Eh,” a boy’s voice said as Lapis quickly snapped the book shut and floated it onto the shelf, rolling up his notes and tucking them into his bag. “That cake was really good, so overall, I’m thinking of the whole thing as an opportunity. Besides, it takes more than just a griffon to put a scratch on these scales!”

“…Uh-huh.”

Lapis walked over to the same window he’d used last time, quickly glancing around for any sign of Pinkie or the rest of Twilight’s friends, then opened it and leaped outside. Then, keeping a magical grip on his mask just in case, he quickly slipped onto a side-street and started the walk back to his workshop.

When Lapis finally got back to his workshop, he found a whole bed - not just a mattress, not just a frame, but an entire extra bed complete with pillows and a heavy woolen blanket - sitting in front of his door. Nikki was perched atop one of the bedposts, regarding Lapis with what looked like faint curiosity.

“Lyra and Bon Bon?” Lapis asked, pointing at the bed with a hoof.

Nikki nodded. Lapis shook his head in amusement, then walked around the side of the bed to find that it had been accompanied by a weighty, iron-bound chest of drawers, two simple wooden nightstands, and a framed picture of a chestnut-feathered griffon with a faintly smug grin and an enormous handlebar mustache - so large, in fact, that it didn’t even fit in the frame, its perfectly coiffed lengths extending to both sides of the portrait and out of sight.
Lapis levitated the picture up to eye-level and grinned. Oh, I am keeping this painting. Actually, you know what, I’m keeping all of this. Lyra, Bon Bon - the next time we meet up, I’m paying for the coffee.

Wrangling all the stuff through the front door was difficult enough to make him reconsider keeping it - especially the bed - but he got there eventually. The bed, the chest of drawers, and one of the nightstands ended up shoved into a spare bedroom, though he swapped out his current blanket for the woolen one. Then, Lapis quickly cooked himself a hayburger, sat the portrait of the mustached griffon in the chair opposite himself, and sat down to have some dinner just as it started to rain outside, quickly opening the door to let Nikki take shelter from the downpour. She settled herself atop one of the lanterns, fluffing her feathers up until she was a poofy ball, and promptly fell asleep, leaving Lapis to enjoy his hayburger with no company but the rain.

Lapis looked across the table at the mustached portrait as he ate, trying to figure out where was the best spot to put it. It would certainly brighten up the patch of bare wall opposite the window in the front room, but it might also fill some space in his bedroom, or the hallway.

Where will I spend more time? Lapis wondered. Where will I see it more often?

He snorted. Well, I don’t really spend a lot of time in this house at all. The downstairs workshop, maybe, but I’m only in this room for the mornings and early evenings. And besides, it’s not like I’ll be living in Ponyville for long, right?

Lapis’ chewing slowed, and he stared down at his plate for a moment. …Right?

Well, of course he wasn’t. He’d just managed to get his first lead on translating his books on magic, and… well, magic was magic. If he could make two halves of a broken plate join back into an unbroken whole without even thinking about it, then surely Earth was just a few steps away. Twilight had teleported a few times in the show - Lapis was hoping the answer was as simple as learning the same spell she had, and then picking his home on Earth as the destination.

And that’ll only take an afternoon or two, tops, Lapis thought. So, honestly, I might as well not even hang up the painting at all - well, not until I get back home, anyway. It’ll be a nice memento. Lapis nodded, then took a decisive bite of his hayburger-

His door slammed open, and Lapis almost choked on his food. A thunderclap rattled the building, the accompanying flash of light momentarily silhouetting the griffon he’d greeted earlier standing in his doorway. She was panting and dripping wet, the scowl on her face showing no hint of any emotion but seething anger.

“Hey, you,” she spat, glaring at him with the bright-yellow eyes of an exceptionally annoyed eagle. “Pigeon-colt. How much to rent out a room for the night?”

Back on Earth, Lapis’ house had been at the intersection of two long, isolated country roads in the middle of what his grandpa had lovingly referred to as “bum-fuck nowhere, Ohio.” It wasn’t uncommon during spells of bad weather for drivers to get stranded in the area, and only slightly less strange for them to ask to stay the night. His mom had always kept the guest bedroom ready for just this purpose, and had made a point of only offering a price to the folks who demanded one.

As such, it only took a few seconds for Lapis to process the griffon’s question. “Let’s start with thirty bits for bed and breakfast, and add on either the story of how you got here or ten extra.”

The griffon bristled, then stepped inside, reaching under her wing and producing a small, worn coin-pouch. “You’re getting thirty-five, no ‘story,’ and my promise not to borrow anything. Deal?”

“…Deal,” Lapis said, cocking an eyebrow. …‘Borrow?’ Excuse me? “What’s the name?”

“Gilda,” the griffon replied, counting coins out onto the counter. “You?”

“Lapis Print,” Lapis replied. “Your room’s the second door down that hall. You’re lucky, I only just got a spare bed this evening.”

“Tell it to somegriffon who cares,” Gilda said. She finished counting out the coins, then stalked off down the hall. A few seconds later, Lapis heard the door creak open briefly before slamming shut.

…Well, that happened, Lapis thought, cocking an eyebrow down the hall. He stood up, headed over to the counter, and quickly counted the coins into the bag of bits he kept underneath. Considering her “borrow” comment, maybe I’d better put these in the basement tonight.

Although… this visit might actually be an opportunity. Right now, Lyra and Bon Bon think I was raised by griffons… Lapis stared into the bag of bits for a second, the gears turning in his head. …Maybe I could learn a thing or two about griffon culture over breakfast?

Grinning, Lapis opened the closet door and stepped inside, levitating the bag of bits in with him - then, after a moment’s hesitation, he grabbed the portrait of the mustached griffon as well. I’ll just leave it at the foot of the stairs for now.

Between the sound of the heavy wooden door thumping shut and the boom of thunder that split the air at that moment, there was a split second where Lapis would’ve been hard-pressed to hear the roar of an enraged adult dragon - let alone the frustrated, tortured groan of a griffon as she pressed her face into a stranger’s pillow, tried to forget the only friend she’d ever had, and clenched her beak shut against what she refused to think of as anything but a yell. Because she hadn’t cried since she was a cub, and that wetness pressing into her eyes from the pillow was nothing but a few more drops of rainwater.
No matter how salty it smelled.

Lapis woke up early the next morning, and instantly regretted it.

Groaning, he sat up in bed, shielding his eyes from the first faint glow of sunlight on the horizon with a raised hoof. He’d spent half the night trying to use the definitions he’d copied down to decipher something, anything useful about magic, but so far he’d only managed to connect “starswirls” to the strange gripping sensation he’d felt upon shaking hooves with Big Mac. Eventually, he’d come to the conclusion that he’d need to make a repeat visit to the Golden Oak, and had retired to bed not long after. It had taken him longer to get to sleep than he’d hoped for - for a while, all he could think of was how much his family must be missing him.

Lapis flung his blankets off himself, then stumbled out of bed and into the kitchen, shaking those thoughts out of his head. Okay. Breakfast and coffee first, make plans for library visit later.

It was a lucky thing that ponies could, apparently, eat eggs, and that the Mayor’s hiring bonus had let Lapis afford some cooking utensils on top of groceries and his old bed set. Lapis would not have been able to handle a completely vegan diet, even if his new body belonged to an obligate herbivore - being able to have scrambled eggs with spinach, mushrooms, and Swiss to go with a morning cup of coffee was a very welcome surprise, and it meant that he didn’t go hungry as he got started mixing some eggs, flour, butter, cream, baking powder, and sugar in a bowl.

Once Lapis had added salt and blueberries, and gotten the results of his mixing onto a baking sheet and into the oven, the start of his morning turned out to be his favorite kind of peace and quiet. He got to look out his broad window as he sipped his coffee, watching as the sun rose and Ponyville came to life one pedestrian at a time, trying to put together the best questions to ask his houseguest.

Lapis’ coffee had just kicked in by the time he started hearing movement from his guest bedroom. He stood, clearing his own plate and moving into the kitchen - breakfast wasn’t done baking yet, but it wouldn’t be cooking for long now, either.

“Breakfast should be ready in about five minutes,” Lapis said, as he heard the muffled clicking of talons pass by the door to the kitchen. “How do you take your eggs?”

“Whatever gets them on a plate two minutes ago,” he heard the griffon yawn through the door.

“Plain scrambled, coming right up.”

In the time it took Lapis to get a couple of eggs scrambled, seasoned, and on a plate, the other half of breakfast had finished baking. He grabbed one off the sheet for himself, then added two of the pastries onto Gilda’s plate before he stepped out of the kitchen into the front room.

Gilda had taken his chair. She was pointedly looking away from the window, glaring into an empty corner of the room and drumming her talons on the table. She pulled a double-take when Lapis got her plate in front of her, picking up one of the scones on her plate in a single clawed forepaw. “Are these why you stayed up all night?” she muttered.

Lapis shook his head. “Nah, scones only take about half an hour to make. I kept you up?”

“Maybe.” Gilda set the scone down, picked up her fork, and pointedly avoided eye contact as she started into the eggs. Lapis took the obvious cue and went behind the counter to busy himself, munching at his scone as he started organizing the few bits of paperwork he had. Gilda kept eating, and Lapis found himself struck by the sight of the griffon manipulating the fork. He would’ve expected the three-inch knives on her fingertips to get in the way, but she seemed to work around them without any difficulty. As he watched, she used a talon on her free claw like a knife, bracing it against her fork to cut an especially large piece of egg with a casual, practiced swipe-

“Hey, weirdo. You got something you wanna say about my claws?”

Lapis blinked, looking up to see that Gilda was scowling up at him, her eyes narrowed. “Oh, it’s nothing. It’s just been a while since I’ve been around someone without hooves - reminds me of home, is all.”

“Uh-huh.” Gilda stuffed a forkful of egg into her mouth. “Lotta griffons live there?”

“…Not so much, no.”

“Yeah, I can tell.” Gilda swallowed, then turned to glare at him. “You make good eggs, so here’s your tip: don’t stare at a griffon’s claws unless you’re keen on getting a closer look. Way closer.”

Lapis ducked behind the counter, rolling his eyes as he searched for a pencil. “Let me guess: as in, coming-right-toward-my-face closer?”

“You catch on quick, huh?”

Lapis found his pencil, and quickly scribbled down a note, tuning out the griffon for a second. Staring at griffons’ talons: major faux pas. Or maybe staring in general. Reasons unclear, further investigation likely unwise.

“So why’re you still in this dump?” Gilda asked.

“Sorry?” Lapis said, tucking his note away and standing up.

“Ponyville,” the griffon said. “If you miss your ‘home,’ why’re you still here?”

Lapis quickly hid his grimace. “Well, it’s a bit of a long way out.”

“Uh-huh.” Gilda took another bite of egg. “Griffonstone’s a long way out, but I’m still going, soon as this plate’s empty. What’s stopping you?”

“…Money,” Lapis replied, grabbing a stack of completed request slips from below his desk. “It’s easier to come by here, and I’ll need a bit more of it to be comfortable once I get back.”

Gilda snorted, a smirk curling her beak. “You sure you don’t know any griffons? ‘Cause that’s just-” She glanced out the window, then cut herself off and ducked down out of sight.

“What’s with you?” Lapis asked, cocking an eyebrow.

“Shut up. Somepony’s coming down the road,” Gilda hissed.

“Yeah, it’s a thoroughfare, they do that. What’s the issue?”

“It’s somepony I don’t want to talk to,” the griffon growled, glaring up at him. Lapis cocked an eyebrow, then his eyes widened as a faint, all-too-familiar sound reached his ears - the steady, springing hoofsteps of Pinkie Pie.

Lapis grabbed the mask from his saddlebags, which were hung on a peg by the door, and slipped it onto his own face, ignoring Gilda’s look of utter bewilderment. Only once he was safely masked did he look out the window, scanning for the pink nightmare.
Sure enough, there was Pinkie. She was heading down the main road at her usual bouncing pace, briefly pausing midair to wave hello to Derpy Hooves. For a few brief seconds, Lapis thought he might not have anything to worry about.
Then, directly across from his shop, Pinkie paused. She cocked her head, shutting her eyes and lifting her nose to sniff the air - then her head whipped around with uncanny speed, her too-wide eyes snapping directly onto Lapis’ front door.
Lapis lurched away from his window at once, plastering himself against the inside of the door as the sound of Pinkie’s sproinging began to grow louder. Shit. Shitshitshit!

“Hey!” a voice hissed. Lapis blinked, then looked down to see Gilda glancing between him and the window. “Is she coming this way?! Where can I hide?!”

For a second, Lapis considered telling Gilda to take it up with somepony who cared, but then he saw the panic in her glaring yellow eyes, and it was just too familiar to ignore. “Closet behind the counter,” Lapis muttered, pointing with a hoof. “She’s coming now, go-go-go!”

Gilda needed no further encouragement. She disappeared to the closet door in brown-and-white blur, whipping it open and shut with barely a thunk. Lapis was in front of the closet a second later, quickly tugging his crooked mask back into position as the sproing, sproing, sproing of Pinkie’s approach came to a stop.

“Hmmm…” Lapis heard her saying from the other side of the door. “…Blueberry scones, with a little bit too much flour, served with a side of scrambled eggs and coffee!”

For a second, nothing happened. Then, the doorknob jiggled, and Lapis took a slow, deep breath in and held perfectly still.

The doorknob turned, and Pinkie burst in a second later, raising a hoof as she sang out, “Heeere’s Pinkie!”

Perfectly… still, Lapis thought, forcing his eyelid not to twitch.

“Sorry to burst in, but it just smelled so tasty, I had to… huh? Hello-ooo?” Pinkie called out. “Anypony home?”

Pinkie took a few steps further in, glancing for a second at Gilda’s plate on the table before wandering through the open door and into the kitchen. “Ooh, tidy! …Hey, does anypony mind if I have some of these scones?”

…Really?

“Aaany-pony at all?” Pinkie asked. “…No? Okey-dokey-lokey!”

Then, there was a brief, violent burst of wet noise, something like the low, sucking squelch of a booted foot sinking into a deep puddle of thick mud. It lasted only for a fraction of a second, but caught Lapis so off-guard that it took him a moment to recognize the sound of his sink running, and the dry scratching noise of his dish-brush being put to work. A few seconds afterward, it stopped, and Pinkie Pie bounced back into view, chewing blissfully as she meandered across the room and out of Lapis’ shop, stopping only to shut the door behind her.

Lapis waited until he couldn’t hear her sproinging, then started counting. One. Two. Three-

“She gone yet?” Gilda hissed from behind the closet door, and Lapis jerked in surprise.

“…Probably,” he sighed, taking off the mask. “You alright in there?”

“Almost clipped my talon on the axe in there, but yeah, I’m cool,” Gilda replied, pushing the door open and brushing off her beak. “…You didn’t seriously hide from her with that, did you?”

“The mask? Yeah, that’s how I did it,” Lapis replied, tucking it back into his saddlebag. Note to self: get a lock for the door. Maybe even a bar.

“I don’t believe you,” Gilda said, cocking an eyebrow at him.

“If I wanted to lie to you, Gilda, I’d like to think I would pick a lie that made sense,” Lapis replied, suddenly exhausted. I need more coffee. “…Can we just sit down and eat, please?”

“Works for me,” Gilda said, resuming her seat and poking at her now-cold plate of scrambled egg. Lapis turned and headed into the kitchen, partially to figure out what Pinkie Pie had done in there, and partially because he was considering whether or not to have another scone. Both concerns, however, were resolved by the sight of the now-empty baking sheet that sat on top of Lapis’ stove.

…There were nine scones on that sheet, Lapis thought, feeling his own jaw drop. Nine.

He spared a glance at his sink, and found his mood only slightly improved by the discovery that Pinkie had also washed and dried all his dirty dishes, leaving them in neat, sparkling-clean stacks beside the sink.
Well, at least now he knew what the odd noise had been.

Lapis walked back into the front room, slightly stunned, and took the seat opposite Gilda. She cocked an eyebrow as she looked up to see him empty-hooved. “Thought you were gonna grab a bite to eat.”

“I was,” Lapis replied. “Pinkie ate all the other scones.”

Gilda paused, glancing at one of her scones, which had what looked like a small nibble taken out of it. “You made more of these?”

“Yeah, I made a dozen of them,” Lapis said, making a helpless gesture with his hoof. “She ate the other nine.”

Gilda’s other eyebrow rose, then she scowled, spearing her last bite of eggs with her fork. “Pinkie Pie,” she muttered.

“Pinkie Pie,” Lapis agreed, and for a moment they sat in silence together.

“What’d she do to you?” Lapis eventually asked.

“You first,” Gilda said, sitting back in her chair. “How come you made that mask in the first place? Doesn’t seem like something you come up with on the fly.”

“Pinkie throws a party for every new pony in town,” Lapis said. Gilda’s face darkened at the words, and suddenly Lapis got the niggling feeling that he’d forgotten something, but he pressed on. “I’m not really a party …pony, so I managed not to let her figure out where I live. If that changed… well, to start with, I’d end up spending the day afterward sweeping up streamers and ribbons, and then there’d still be confetti in every nook and cranny for years. Not to mention I’d probably have to deal with her way more frequently, since I bake sometimes and she’s definitely a pastry fan.

“The mask started out as a joke for myself. Well, a reference, but yeah, I wasn’t really expecting it to work. Then it did, and that broke my brain a little, until I just decided to not think about it too hard.” Lapis snorted. “Honestly, half the ponies in town seem to have that attitude about her. ‘Pinkie Pie’ is its own explanation. But that’s enough about me, what’s your story?”

“If I tell you, you’ll owe me five bits back,” Gilda said, staring at him levelly.

Lapis blinked, confused, until he remembered the terms he’d laid out the night before. “Oh yeah, I’d forgotten about that. …Alright, look, I’d thought you were a fugitive or something, but it looks like it’s not the law you’re running from. So, if you don’t want to talk about it, I’m not going to buy it out of you-”

“Hey, I don’t run from anything,” Gilda snapped.

Lapis raised his hooves in surrender. “Okay, that’s fair.”

There were a few seconds of tense silence, then Gilda spoke again. “…You’d have taken in a fugitive?”

“You were acting like a jerk, not a crook,” Lapis said. “There was no real reason for me to think you were up to anything wrong, and I probably could’ve argued that in court. Besides, money is money.”

Gilda snorted again, and that same smirk returned to her face. “…Alright, I gotta ask. Did you, or did you not, grow up in Griffonstone? Because you think more like a griffon than anypony I’ve ever met.”

“No, I didn’t,” Lapis replied. “Though, for some reason, most of the ponies I know think I did. Why, would I like it there?”

“Oh, you’d hate it,” Gilda replied, picking up a scone with one forepaw and leaning back in her chair. “Nogriffon does anything unless there’s bits in it for them, everygriffon’s more concerned about paying off their bills than about staying out of each other’s way, and the fewer questions you ask a griffon who’s trying to do stuff fast, the less likely you are to find out how sharp their talons are.”

“And you’re heading there?” Lapis muttered. “Doesn’t sound like a great vacation spot.”

“Nah, it’s cool sometimes,” Gilda replied, staring off into space. “Everygriffon gets that everygriffon else has stuff going on, so everyone’s chill with each other. You can walk into a bar and ask for the nastiest stuff they got, and as long as you got the bits, you’ll get it, no questions asked.” She chuckled. “Tartarus, most of the time, the griffon next to you’ll offer to share a toast, and you can drink together all night long without saying a word.”

Lapis nodded, trying not to show his astonishment. Okay, recreational drinking is a thing here. Somehow. Good to know.

“It’s cool,” Gilda repeated, and the smile on her beak mostly reached her eyes.

Lapis nodded again. “Yeah, sure. I could see that.”

Another silence fell, this one purely uncomfortable instead of tense. Gilda opened her beak, either to talk or to take a bite of her scone -

A knock echoed through the building, and both of them started in their seats. “Hey! Lapis, you home?”

Lapis recognized Bon Bon’s voice, and stood to get the door. “Sorry, I gotta get this real quick-” He looked back just in time to catch the tuft of Gilda’s lion-like tail disappearing into the hallway. Huh. Guess she doesn’t really want to talk to most ponies in this town, then?

When Lapis opened the door, it was to find Bon Bon standing alone on the other side - and behind her…

“Uh,” Lapis began.

“Is it too much?” Bon Bon asked, her ears half-folded back. “Because I tried to tell Lyra, but there’s only so much I can say.”

“No, no, it’s exactly what I need,” Lapis said, doing his best not to gape at the small cartful of decorations, small blankets, and assorted bric-a-brac that Bon Bon had pulled up to his house. “It’s just- it’s a lot, is all… Alright, look, there’s no way you’re getting all this from a spring cleaning, okay? Could you please just tell me what’s really going on? Whatever it is, I promise I won’t be mad.”

Bon Bon winced. “Yeah, I told her it was too much.” She sighed, then leaned in, speaking in a low, clear tone. “Alright, listen. I don’t know if you remember it or not, but just after Princess Celestia left, you admitted that the reason you didn’t have any boxes to unpack was because… well, because you didn’t have anything when you moved here.”

“I what?!” Lapis yelped. “That’s not, um, uh… yeah, that’s actually the reason.” Lapis sighed, facehoofing. Shit. “I must have really been tired, huh?”

“You were. I’m honestly impressed that you didn’t pass out in front of the Princess,” Bon Bon said. “But anyway. Somehow, Lyra got it into her head that the reason you didn’t want to have Pinkie over for a party was because you were embarrassed about how empty your house was. So now… well, she’s trying to fill it up.”

“Oh. Great. I guess I’ll need to talk to her, then.”

“Yes, you do,” Bon Bon replied, pulling her head back and speaking in a normal tone. “And make it a priority if you can - everything before now really did come from a spring cleaning, except the rug, but this wagonful was bought with the bits from all Lyra’s performances last week. She was going to buy the two of us a spa trip, but we talked it over and I had to agree - if it’s the way Lyra thinks it is, you’re more important.”

“It’s not, trust me.” Lapis said, waving a hoof. “And I'll pay you back, I've got the bits to spare. I just don’t want to deal with Pinkie. Especially not after she broke in this morning, and ate nine of the dozen scones I made for breakfast.”

Bon Bon cocked an eyebrow. “Huh. I didn’t think you cooked. But yes, she does that. I’d check your pantry if I were you - she probably paid you back by doing a little more than just your dishes.”

“-Wait, how’d you know she did my dishes?”

“Because she’s done the same thing to me, too,” Bon Bon sighed, unstrapping herself from the cart. “Word of advice - eat quickly, and don’t leave pies or anything else to cool by an open window. Otherwise, you may as well hang a sign.”

“Good to know,” Lapis said. “And, uh… you’re not going to leave that stuff here, are you?”

“Oh, yes I am,” Bon Bon replied, smirking as she walked around to the back of the cart. “Lyra’s got the wrong reasons, but I think she has the right idea: your house is too empty. It’s not you yet, it’s not your home, it’s just a house that you live in.” She pushed the cart through the door and into Lapis’ front room, dusted off her hooves, then turned to face him again. “When I moved into Ponyville, I didn’t realize how barren my home had felt until after I put some pictures on the walls. I know it sounds silly, but the difference was like night and day - both for my house, and my mood.” Turning, she pointed to the cart with one hoof. “So. Start with these. Then, take some time to buy something for yourself, and to put it in a spot where you can see it. I promise, it’ll make you a happier pony. That’s my advice, whether you follow it or not is up to you.”

Lapis chuckled, rolling his eyes. “Alright, I’ll look into it. Thanks, Bon Bon.”

“Don’t mention it,” Bon Bon said, turning to leave. “Be careful out there.”

“Will do, you too!” Lapis called, as she turned and headed out the door.

As soon as Lapis shut the door, Gilda poked her head back around the corner. “You get a lot of visitors?”

“Not usually, no,” Lapis said, opening the door again to grab some notices off the board. “There might be a few ponies who show up to tack up some job requests, but beyond that, Bon Bon and her friend Lyra are the only two ponies I know.”

“Uh-huh.” Gilda nodded, then sat back down to eat. She picked up one of the scones, gave it a hesitant glance, then took a tentative bite. “…Hey, that’s not bad!”

“I do what I can,” Lapis replied, absently looking over the requests. Gutter on Mane, chimney on Cantering, and a bunch of shingles on 69th. A small grin spread across Lapis’ face. …Nice.

“You’re seriously cool with that, aren’t you?”

Lapis blinked. “Huh?”

“Those two ponies, just… giving you free stuff,” Gilda said, gesturing to the pile of ornaments outside his door. “You’re not angry that they think you’re having a hard time, or anything?”

“Of course not,” Lapis said, frowning. “It’s free stuff, why would I be? It’d be like… I don’t know, like getting annoyed for getting presents on your birthday.”

“Presents are different, stupid,” Gilda said, huffing and sitting back in her seat, then taking another bite of her scone. “When ‘oo get somefin’ as a presen’, id’s cause you’re the big ‘fing that day anyway.” She swallowed, then continued. “But you don’t just give anygriffon free stuff for no reason. Not unless they’re cubs on their own, or their joints are so creaky they can’t work. If you’re a griffon getting free stuff, it’s other griffons saying you can’t take care of yourself.”

“…That’s really not what they have in mind,” Lapis said, shaking his head.

Gilda shrugged, taking another bite. “Well, id’s wha’ they’re sayin’ anyway.” She swallowed, smirking over at him. “Did you just not realize that before now, or what?”

“No, I knew,” Lapis said, looking over his order slips again, then picking an assortment of tools from the closet and levitating them over to his saddlebags. Looks like… two total rooftops need fixed on funny-number street, both resulting from pegasus crashes. Was there a bad gust of wind over there or something? “I’m just more grateful for the help than I’m resentful for needing it. It lets me know they care about me, and that’s not the worst thing to know.”

Gilda hesitated, her half-eaten scone halfway to her mouth. “…Uh-huh.” She scowled, then took another bite of her scone, glaring out the window as she chewed.

Lapis watched, and as he did, he got that niggling feeling in his stomach again. There’s something I’m forgetting. What is it, what is it… one of these requests, maybe? He looked them over again, trying to figure out whether there was some tool he was missing.

“…I mean, I guess it’s pretty weird. Ponies are a pretty friendly bunch, on average,” Lapis said as he started digging through the closet. “It’s not hard to get them to care about you - I mean, look at me, I only got on Bon Bon’s good side accidentally. All I did was cause her some trouble, apologize, and do what I could to fix it, then she started up some small talk, and then here she is a week and a half later, bringing me furniture and life advice for no reason other than being friendly.”

“You think it’s easy for them to stop caring about you, too?” Gilda muttered.

Lapis shook his head. “It’s weird, but somehow, I doubt it.”

“Uh-huh.” Gilda sighed, swallowed the last of her scone, then picked up the other in her free forepaw and stood. “Well, I’m outta here. Gotta get in the air while the thermals are still rising.”

“Good luck,” Lapis said, as he realized what he’d been missing in his saddlebags. Spare nails for the shingles - duh.

Gilda made it right to the front of the door, then paused. “…Hey, listen. It’s only because you made some lucky choices, but as far as griffon nest-n’-breakfasts go, this place wasn’t terrible.”

Lapis cocked his head. “Sorry, did you say nest-n’-breakfast?”

“Yeah,” Gilda said, shrugging. “What, do you call it a stable-n’-hay when you’re mostly serving ponies?”

Lapis’ face must’ve been answer enough, because Gilda rolled her eyes and smirked. “Whatever. Look, what I’m saying is, if you want to make some bits on the side giving griffons a place to stay the night, you could. Just put some trim around your door like an arch with three points on top, and if a griffon drops by, they’ll get the idea.”

“Huh. Is that like the griffon version of a vacancy sign or something?”

“Nah, it’s just something we do for our doors. It looks cool. Maroon or dark blue are your choices,” Gilda replied, pulling his door open. “Oh, and make those scones whenever you’ve got a griffon over. Scones are kind of an us thing, too.”

“If I find a reliable way to keep Pinkie away, I will,” Lapis replied.

The smirk dropped off Gilda’s face. “Yeah. Her. I’m outta here.” She crouched low to the ground like a cat, raising her wings above her head - then brought them down, and disappeared into the sky at blurring speed, turning into a speck on the horizon after only a few moments.

As Gilda flew off, turning toward Griffonstone, she’d rather not have had a lot on her mind. Munching on the other scone helped - griffon scones were better, but pony scones weren’t awful, not by a long way. Still, there was one pony she couldn’t put out of her head, and it wasn’t the colt she’d just told about the cool parts of griffon culture.

The reason she’d taken off so fast, high, and early was Rainbow Dash. Dealing with her right now wasn’t going to be good - right now, all she wanted to do was get back to Griffonstone, but that didn’t stop her from scanning the skies below her for her old pal.

She was over top of the town pond, doing her whole weather-director thing with the whistle and the yelling. When she gestured, she was moving her hooves pretty fast, but from up here Gilda couldn’t tell whether she was trying to hide being bummed out, or just being bossy. If she got close enough to see whether Dash had tucked back her ears or not, she’d know - ponies’ ears were almost built-in lie detectors, and Dash was no exception.

Gilda groaned, rolling her eyes and stuffing her beak with more scone. Yeah, I’m not getting anywhere near her right now. Couldn’t pay me to.

The pigeon-colt’s words seemed to echo in her head for a second. “All I did was cause some trouble for her, apologize, and do what I could to fix it… It’s weird, but somehow, I doubt it.”

“Yeah, well, trouble isn’t how we started,” Gilda muttered, glaring down at the last few bites of the scone. “It’s how we ended.”

Regardless, the words lingered as heavily as Gilda's scowl as she turned her gaze forward and set off for Griffonstone.

Lapis emerged from the closet a few seconds later. Instead of any of his tools, the object he held in front of him in a magical grip was the portrait of the mustached griffon - though, he did grab a hammer and nail out of his saddlebag as he passed it by.

This, Lapis thought to himself as he started hammering the nail into his living room wall, isn’t admitting defeat, no more than the rug is. I’m not giving up, not by a long way. But the fact of the matter is, getting home isn’t going to be a weekend project. It’ll take a while. And during that time…

Lapis finished, then carefully gripped the portrait with his magic. During that time, it’ll do me good to have a… a symbol. A reminder, that there are people who care about me. Not just back on Earth, but here, too. Something to help me know that I’m not alone.

He chuckled as he hung the painting, stepping back to admire his work. And besides, it’ll make this house feel a little more comfortable, too. A little home-away-from-home.

Lapis straightened the painting, then cocked an eyebrow at the portrait’s smug-looking smirk. “You shut your beak,” he said.

A coo came from the corner of the room, and Lapis looked over to see Nikki giving him a questioning look. “Sorry, not you. About to head out again, if you wanna come with.”

Nikki yawned, stretched, then lazily glided down to land on Lapis’ head as he slung the saddlebags over his shoulder and levitated a ladder over to his side. He made his way outside, running through his mental to-do list. Let’s see… The gutter will probably be the easy one, so I’ll save that for last. Chimney and rooftops are things I’d better get out of the way now, before it gets too hot to be safe up on roofs. That leaves the middle of the day hopefully open to plan my next entry into the Golden Oak… and to buy some cheap lumber and dark blue paint.

Lapis propped the ladder up against the first house of the day, clambered onto the rooftop, and quickly scanned the skies for Rainbow Dash. Luckily, she was far off in the distance, over the small lake outside the village. It looked like the other pegasi were busy wrangling the weather, and she was directing them, blowing a whistle and barking orders, her ears tucked back flat against her head in what Lapis guessed was annoyance. Yeah, she’s busy. I’m in the clear.

He got to work on the shingles, but that niggling feeling hit him again, and he took another second to look at Rainbow Dash. First Gilda, and now her… what’s bugging me?

An image shot thought his mind like lightning: Rainbow and Gilda, sitting on a cloud together, Pinkie flying up toward them in what looked like a pedal-powered helicopter made out of candy. Lapis froze, his eyes snapping wide open as he remembered who Gilda was - and, more importantly, who her former best friend had been. Shit. Did I change things? Shit, shit, shitshitshit-

Nikki shifted atop Lapis’ head, and Lapis wasn’t able to react before she gave one of his ears a light, firm slap with her wing.

“Alright, alright,” he muttered, rubbing his stinging ear. “I’m back. Thanks.” Gilda’s already gone, anyway - it’s not like there’s anything I can do.

Lapis sighed, then grabbed the shards of a shingle, merging them together with a flash of light and a burst of warmth on his flank. Besides, if I messed up, I’ll deal with the consequences when I see them. For now, I’d better focus on what I can see coming.

He nodded, put the first loose shingle back into place, and set to work.

Author's Note

Actual author's note happens in a second, but first things first:

Patch Notes (v1.0.1)
Luna's wings incorrectly rendered as jet-black in Section B - lowered base contrast settings, wings now appear "dark" (Those Kids in the Corner)
Derpy's coat incorrectly rendered as white in Section B - lowered base contrast settings also resolved this, coat now appears "cloudy gray" (Kevin Lee, Courage Fire)
Lyra fails to remember Twilight, despite having apparently met her in Canterlot earlier that morning. This is because the NPC-generation algorithm for Canterlot grabs from a selection of base skins, one of which is Lyra's - the Canterlot NPC that resembles Lyra is not her, despite her matching appearance (Kevin Lee, FanOfMostEverything - kudos to CasualReader for their explanation of possibility; unfortunately, the only way I could think of to incorporate Casual's suggestion was head trauma, and amnesia has always just kinda been... eh? for me.)

And, now that that's taken care of - hey, welcome to Episode III! Thanks for caring enough about the story to read the next steps of it, even after the almost-two-weeks it's been since the last upload.

This chapter took me longer than I was hoping for, partially because I was moving during that time, and partially because it took me longer than I'd hoped to figure out what would be a plausible "this-house-gets-griffons" identifier (major props to tkefner for providing not one, but TWO timelines I was completely unaware of, and for telling me that the MLP wiki has a transcript of every episode!) On a related note, the trim over doors that Gilda mentions near the end of the chapter is canonically a feature shown on the smaller houses in Griffonstone - although, it's often-to-always an indentation instead of a trim-piece. Additionally, "griffon scones" are a thing, though Gilda is a significantly less accomplished baker than Lapis or Pinkie.

I was also unsure of how to get Gilda's characterization right - on the one hand, she's definitely a jerk, but on the other, she's not irredeemable. There's also that whole bit about her being supposed to represent the disdain that some folks feel for little girls' TV. What really bugged me, though, and what led me to write Gilda the way I did, was how the show just kinda brushed off the cut-off of the friendship between Gilda and Rainbow Dash. Sure, you gotta cut the problems out of your life, but it's going to hurt for a while afterward, and it felt (in my opinion only, which is likely not justified) that the writers just forgot about that for a while. Oh, and there's also the whole "Gilda's a jerk, but she's a funny jerk" thing - which I'd loved to have gotten into, but I just felt like she wouldn't be in the mood for humor right then.

Last two things, really quick: first, yes, it's weird that Lapis remembers random bits of the show without recalling names. I'll get to explaining that, I promise - it's just that I'm deliberately doing exposition about who Lapis really is through his identity crises, and he already had one this chapter, so... that. And second, it is with nothing but the greatest pride that I can report to Mad Maudlin that the "herd" fanon is near the very top of the list of Things I Won't Touch, deprived of first-place position only by the "heat" fanon.

Thanks again, and I'll see you in the next one!

0_0_4: Thunder/Head-On

Lapis’ first clue that he would be in for a rough night was when he realized the crowd outside the Golden Oak Library was all looking in the same direction.

Crowds weren’t unusual in Ponyville. There were a lot of ponies living there, of course a lot of them were going to end up in the same space every now and again. What was unusual was when a crowd was all looking at the same thing - which, Lapis found as he craned his neck over top of the other spectators, appeared to be some kind of stage. It hadn’t been there this morning, but it was here now - small, but extravagant all the same. Standing atop it was a pale blue unicorn mare, wearing a purple, star-patterned wizard’s hat and cloak.

Unlike with Gilda, Lapis recognized this unicorn immediately. It was Tricksy - no, wait, isn’t that spelled with an X? Yeah, it’s ‘Trixie,’ right - the loudmouth stage magician. And she’s not wearing the Definitely-Not-The-One-Ring necklace, so that means… this is the episode with the giant bear.

Lapis glanced around to make sure no ponies in the crowd were looking at him, then sighed and sat on his rump. Welp. At least I know Twilight’s going to solve the whole giant, rampaging star-bear problem inside of a few minutes, so it won’t end up being an all-night affair like the Summer Sun Celebration was. Still, I’d better head to bed early tonight, if I can - tonight’s sleep is probably going to be very much interrupted.

As Lapis looked on, Trixie threw her forehooves wide - and her stage erupted into a tiny, well-contained fireworks display, a miniature Catherine wheel suddenly kicking into motion with a flurry of gleaming, smokeless sparks. Lapis blinked in surprise as, only a few seconds later, the lights of the display coalesced into what looked almost like animated neon signs, showing Trixie herself standing up to a scaled-down image of the star-bear. Huh. That’s… odd. Is her stage making those fireworks with magic? I mean, every firework I’ve ever seen leaves behind a lot of smoke, and this is leaving none. So it’s gotta be magic, right?
Huh. Lapis frowned in concentration as the gears started to turn in his head. But her horn isn’t lighting up when the fireworks show goes off, so it’s definitely the stage that’s responsible. Mechanical magic, or maybe just mechanical manipulation of magic… wonder if there’s a name for that?
Or a book… Lapis snorted, standing back up as he spotted Twilight and her friends in the front row of the crowd, their faces vaguely disgusted as they muttered to each other. Yeah, nope. No way I’m heading to the library anytime soon. Especially not today - today is packed.

Lapis headed away from the crowd, quickly checking through a few of his order slips. If I want to get any more attempts at studying done, I need to get these orders knocked out fast. So, let’s see here… a loose shutter, a crooked door, and a table with a broken leg. Let’s get the table first, I should be able to knock that out inside of a few minutes… where is it?

Lapis slid the other orders back into his saddlebags, quickly looking over the rest of the order slip. Request filed by one Mr. Cake, of… the Sugarcube Corner Bakery. Wait, isn’t that the building that looks like someone stacked cupcakes on a gingerbread house? Huh. Well, maybe I’ll see if I can buy some donuts or something from there.

I mean, it’s not like fixing a broken table is going to take too long, right?

“…And this is the table, right here,” said Mr. Cake, gesturing to what was almost a normal coffee table.

Lapis cocked an eyebrow, looking at the stack of circular metal pans that sat where one of the table’s legs should be. “Wow, that’s a lot of cake pans.”

“Well, we are a bakery,” the stallion quipped. His name was Carrot Cake, and the name fit - his coat was a yellow-cake sort of color, his mane and tail were carrot-orange, and even his Cutie Mark was three square slices of his namesake. He had a taller, lankier build than most other ponies in town, and his angular, freckled muzzle had a slight underbite.

“Oh! I was wondering about the home decor,” Lapis said, nodding in mock-realization.

The baker grinned. “Nope! Complete coincidence, actually. Oh, I think I left the table leg under the cabinets. Here, I’ll get it.”

Lapis eyed the tall stack of cake pans again. “What were you doing when you needed to use all these? It had to have put a dent in your production.”

“Eh?” the baker asked from inside the kitchen. “Oh, you mean the cake pans? Well, we really don’t use them too often - most of our business is cupcakes, ya know.” He trotted back into the room a few moments later, holding the table leg between his teeth.

Lapis picked up the table, scooting the stack of cake pans to the side, then levitated the leg over to the rest of the table to inspect the damage. Surprisingly, this wasn’t a case of stripped screw-holes or broken joints - no, the leg had just been snapped off about a sixth of the way down. Lapis floated the legs into position, aligned the halves, and blinked in the flash of light that accompanied his spell.

“Ooh!” Carrot Cake chimed in, ducking his head down just in time to watch the cracks spark themselves out of existence. “Well, isn’t that pretty. Take you long to learn that spell?”

“Longer than I’d have liked,” Lapis said, grinning through a sudden yawn. If I’d been able to do this back on Earth… Focus. “How’d this table get broken, anyway?”

“Oh!” The baker paused, tapping his protruding chin. “Well, Pinkie was in one of her baking frenzies, and she managed to slip on a cupcake pan.”

Lapis nodded. Man, Pinkie just does whatever she wants, huh? Between Mr. Cake, Bon Bon, and me, I feel like half the town’s been a victim of hers by now. “I get it. Must’ve been some angle if she managed to break just one leg, instead of the middle of the table.”

“Oh, no, she didn’t even touch the table,” Carrot Cake replied. “No, she landed on her hooves just fine, but she flipped a full cupcake pan over trying to grab the counter, and sent half a dozen cupcakes flying across the kitchen! Now, that would’ve been fine on its own, but since she had Gummy in there - her pet alligator, cute little guy - he went for the cupcakes. Jumped right off the counter to get ‘em! He did get a cupcake out of it, but of course Pinkie dived to catch him, right as I was walking in with a bag of flour. She knocked the both of us to the floor, dropped Gummy on my face, and sent the bag of flour flying!”

“…And that hit the table?” Lapis asked, cocking his head in bewilderment.

“Nope!” The baker shook his head, then continued, gesturing across the room with a sweep of his front hoof. “The bag of flour went clear through this room, out that door and into the shop proper, and got poor Derpy Hooves right over the head. That mare always seems to catch the worst of things, somehow… Anyway, she just gets covered in flour, then she stumbles in here looking like a ghost-pegasus, and scares the dickens out of my wife, Cup Cake. And Cup Cake, she’s a kicker when she’s startled!” The baker laughed, looking off into the distance. “Well, anyway. So she kicks, and the table leg is right behind her. The next thing ya know, the table is broken, Cup Cake is covered in the tea and cookies she’d spent all morning laying out for the three of us, I’m still on the floor with Pinkie on my back and Gummy clamped onto my nose, and poor Derpy is trying to apologize, but she just can’t stop coughing flour!” Carrot Cake sighed, shaking his head and grinning. “Well, we laughed up a storm about it the other night, but I tell ya, Cup Cake was not happy right then.”

“I’ll bet,” Lapis said, laughing in amazement - then, the grin froze on his face as a possibility occurred to him. “Wait, Pinkie doesn’t work here, does she?”

“Yep, and she lives here, too! You’ve already met her, I bet,” Carrot Cake said. “Even with all the parties she’s always running, she still cooks almost all the cupcakes we sell. Ooh, here, I’ll get you one - on the house!”

“Oh, no, I couldn’t,” Lapis began, but Carrot Cake had already leaned into the kitchen and grabbed one for him.

“I insist,” Carrot Cake said, offering it atop one of his hooves. “If Pinkie were here, she’d be giving ya a whole dozen. She’s out right now - looking for some new pony in town, if I remember right. She always throws the nicest parties for newcomers… But I’m rambling again. Here, take your cupcake, or I’ll forget I’m holding it!”

Lapis levitated the cupcake, torn between bemusement about the baker’s Rube-Goldberg machine of a story, and panic about Pinkie Pie’s continued hunt for him. “Thanks, it looks delicious. Uh, all newcomers? No exceptions, ever?”

“Every single one!” Carrot Cake said, beaming. “Usually the night they arrive. She’s been in a bit of a rush lately, now that I think about it - I think she hadn’t managed to track this pony down in time, and now she wanted to throw an extra-big party to make up for it. Ooh, I’d better start making a cake!” He glanced back towards the kitchen.

“Well, I’d better clear out of your way, then,” Lapis replied. “Hate to keep the lucky pony waiting!”

“Oh, I betcha!” Carrot Cake chuckled, then turned and re-entered the kitchen. “Here, let me get those bits for ya. Now, where did I leave that bag…”

Lapis did his best to tune out the sound of Carrot Cake rummaging around in the pantry, instead straining his ears to listen for any early warning of Pinkie. The sproing, sproing, sproing of her hoofsteps, a knock on the door, anything that might give him a second or two to react. Almost absent-mindedly, Lapis reached into his saddlebag with his magic, trying to get a good grip on his mask -

It wasn’t there.

Oh, shit.

“…And here we are!” Carrot Cake said, re-emerging from the kitchen with a small stack of coins balanced on his hoof. He blinked in surprise at the sight of Lapis. “-Oh, dear. Pinkie didn’t get you with another bag of flour, did she?”

“What? No!” Lapis said, waving his hooves. “No, I- just realized I forgot my money-bag. …Did I really go that pale?”

“Almost!” Carrot Cake chimed, setting the stack of bits on the table. “Well, I hope your saddlebags don’t have any holes. Here, I might have a patch lying around if you need one…”

“No, they’re just fine,” Lapis said, quickly levitating the coins into his bag and turning toward the door. “Thanks for your time, Mr. Cake. And also for the cupcake, but I’d really better get out of here if I want to hunt down my money-bag.”

“Oh, of course. Come back anytime, you’ve been great conversation!”

“I’ll be sure to stop by!” Lapis replied over his shoulder, plastering a smile on his face and making his way out the door toward the front of the shop. He was halfway across the storefront to the exit by the time he heard another door in the building slowly creak open.

Please don’t, Lapis thought, advancing toward the door as stealthily as he could. Please.

“SHHH!” another, higher voice hissed from deep inside the house. Lapis hesitated, just for a second. What? Who’s shushing-

“Oh!” Mr. Cake’s voice yelped from further inside the building. “Goodness, Pinkie Pie, sometimes you’re so quiet-”

Lapis didn’t stick around to hear the rest. He bolted, heading for the front door as fast as his hooves could carry him. And the sound that began to echo from inside the kitchen was the exact same noise he’d expected to hear, the sproing, sproing, sproing, of Pinkie’s hoofsteps, but the time between them was at least two or three times shorter than usual.

A high-pitched scream rang in Lapis’ ears as he passed through the doorway, and he wasn’t sure whether the voice was Pinkie’s or his. He gripped the doorframe with a hoof and used it to hang a right, skidding briefly on the flagstone before taking off down the road at a gallop. Mask, mask, where’s my mask, dammit?! If it’s just in my other saddlebag-

Lapis leaped sideways into an alleyway, narrowly missing a confused pedestrian, just as he heard Sugarcube Corner’s door swing slowly open. He got halfway down the alley before ducking behind a trash can - then, to his surprise, he ended up collapsing with his back against the bin, suddenly gasping and panting for breath. What… the hell? I was… way better at running than this, have I let myself go or something?

As quietly as he could, Lapis started rummaging around his other saddlebag, checking for any sign of the mask, but found that all he had was a stack of order slips and a pencil. Maybe he’d messed up. Maybe his mas was in his first saddlebag, and he’d missed it earlier -

Sproing. Sproing. Sproing.

Lapis felt his eyes widen, felt his heart slow in his chest as the sound of Pinkie’s approach began to echo down the alleyway. Shit! Do I run? There’s nowhere to turn, I’ll lose hands-down in a straight race!

Lapis knew his mask wasn’t in his saddlebag, he always kept it in the same place - had he left it in his house somewhere, or had it fallen out? Whatever the case, Pinkie was approaching his hiding place, and as soon as she reached it, he was basically done.

This, Lapis thought, as Pinkie’s steps grew ever closer, might be it. May as well face it like a man. He took a slow, deep breath, as quietly as he could, and did his best to compose himself, opening his eyes to take in his surroundings.

…Wait. I know this alleyway! He was right next to the Corner Cafe - if he was lucky, then there might be a back entrance.

Forget luck, Lapis thought, setting his jaw. This is the only shot I have. Either it works, or nothing will. He took another breath, his heart beginning to pound in his chest. Please, please, please-!

He lunged forward, ducking under an open window and sidestepping another trash can, and the only thing that stopped him from grinning at the sight of the side entrance was the squeaky-voiced “Ah-ha!” that came from somewhere behind him.

Lapis whipped open the entrance and rushed inside, yanking the door shut behind himself and hurrying toward the first door that looked like it led into the restaurant proper. He shouldered it open, glancing around the restaurant, and had a double-take when he saw Lyra and Bon Bon already sitting in one of the booths. He spotted the waitress bringing Bon Bon a stack of syrup-drenched pancakes,topped with a curved strip of hay-bacon and a pair of cherries atop dollops of whipped cream, so that the pancake looked like it had a smiley face. And all at once, he had the single most insane idea he’d ever had in his life.

As quickly and casually as he could, Lapis hurried toward the pair of ponies. Lyra spotted him first and shot him a friendly wave, but her expression grew confused as he hurried over and sat down beside Bon Bon.

“What are you-” Bon Bon began saying as the door to the Corner Cafe jingled open and the first sproing rang through the building. Lapis didn’t reply - he levitated the top pancake off of Bon Bon’s stack, hay-bacon, cherries and all. Then he flipped it around so that the smiley face was facing away from himself, and pressed the syrup-dripping pancake against his face, spearing it on his horn with a moist squelch.

The syrup instantly saturated his face, gluing itself to his fur as firmly as it held the hay-bacon and other toppings in place. Lapis strained his ears as the sound of Pinkie’s hoofsteps approached his table, passed by… then began to approach again.

“Hey, has anypony seen a really fast, baby-bluey blur around here?” Pinkie asked.

There were a few seconds of silence. “…Nope,” Lyra wheezed.

Pinkie huffed. “Well, if anypony sees that blur, let me know. I owe it three nice-to-meet-you’s, two dozen cupcakes, and a whole half-month’s worth of party!” There was a sudden rush of air, and Lapis felt his mane ruffle in the exact same moment that the door to the Corner Cafe suddenly closed.

Lapis waited until a count of ten before he pulled his impromptu mask off his face. There were strings of syrup that connected his forehead and muzzle to the pancake, and Lapis winced as he watched them drip down onto the table, gingerly returning the pancake to Bon Bon’s plate.

“Lapis?” Bon Bon asked, her tone perfectly calm. “What the buck?”

Lyra snorted, then fell sideways on her bench as she broke into hysterical laughter. Lapis sighed, grabbing a napkin and scrubbing off his horn. “I don’t even know, anymore.”

A few minutes later, Lapis had bought Bon Bon another stack of pancakes, and was tucking into a small plate of scrambled eggs with veggies and cheese. Lyra had mostly gotten control of herself again, though every so often she would glance at Lapis’ face, the fur of which was still matted with syrup, and giggle. Bon Bon, meanwhile, was trying to hold the exact conversation that Lapis was least keen on having just then.

“…But is it really worth it?” she was saying. “Lapis, I’m not exactly a party pony myself, but you have to see that avoiding Pinkie is getting to be more trouble for you than whatever hosting her party would’ve been!”

“What it would’ve been, maybe,” Lapis said, rubbing his forehead with a free hoof. This’ll take forever to wash out… I wish they had Goo-Gone here. “But not what it will be. I just came here from Sugarcube Corner, had to fix a table for Mr. Cake. He said that if Pinkie finds out who I am, or where I live, she’s going to make up for lost time by throwing an extra-big party.”

“Well, that’s all the more reason for you to make first contact now!” Lyra said, waving a hoof. “The longer you go without introducing yourself to Pinkie, the crazier the party is going to get. Why in Equestria are you so keen on not talking to Pinkie in the first place, anyway?”

Because I’m an alien from another planet who’s seen the future of this world, I know that Pinkie, Twilight, and the rest of her friends are doomed to get into ten times more trouble on a regular basis than everyone else in Ponyville put together, and I’d bet every last bit I own that - if I got involved with them - I’d get swept up into a lot more of their trouble than I’d like. Which is a problem because I need to get back to my home as soon as I possibly can, on account of the fact that I’ve probably put my family in more debt than they can pay off by being dumb enough to disappear under mysterious circumstances, and the fact that that debt will only continue to increase the longer I’m gone. Ergo, I need to waste as little time as possible, or else.

“Because… I just am, okay?” Lapis said. “I meant to mention this to you earlier, Lyra, but it’s not because I’m embarrassed about my house or anything. Parties are just… Look, have you ever spilled a bag of glitter or something in your saddlebags?”

Bon Bon cocked a confused eyebrow, but Lyra nodded, so Lapis pushed on. “How long did it take before you could put anything in those saddlebags, and not have them come out covered in glitter?”

Lyra hesitated, tapping her chin with a hoof. “…You know, I think stuff still comes out of my saddlebags with glitter on it every so often.”

“Exactly,” Lapis said. “Confetti’s the same way, if there’s enough of it. Now, let me ask you this: what happens to confetti when it gets wet?”

“It goes soggy?” Bon Bon asked, her eyebrow still cocked.

“Yep. And what happens to the dye?”

“…Ooooh, I get it,” Lyra said.

Bon Bon glanced over at her. “So? You ask a unicorn who knows cleaning spells to take care of the stain.”

“Well, yeah, but I don’t know cleaning spells, and I don’t really know many unicorns that do,” Lyra pointed out. “The same goes for Lapis, I’m guessing… Oh, have you picked up those books I recommended for you yet?”

…Man, it’s just one bad topic after another, huh? “No,” Lapis sighed, “I haven’t. I’m not exactly… comfortable going into the library at the moment. I checked out four books from there - one was the book about the Elements of Harmony, but the other three were about some more specific types of magic. Problem is, apparently I didn’t check them out right, and now Twilight’s put up a whole poster saying that somepony owes a hundred and fifty bits in fees-”

Bon Bon’s eyebrows shot up, and Lyra nearly stood upright in her seat. “A hundred and fifty!?”

“Per book,” Lapis finished, and Lyra sat back in her seat, her jaw dropping. Bon Bon, meanwhile, slowly shook her head. “Sounds like the standard fine levied for petty theft… and if Twilight’s treating mishoofing of library books as a crime, then that might warrant sending a letter to the Mayor’s office. They’re the ones responsible for laying down the law, not librarians.”

“…But what about students to Princess Celestia?” Lyra asked. Bon Bon raised a hoof, opening her mouth to object- then paused, frowning and lowering her hoof.

“Exactly,” Lapis said, swallowing the last forkful of his eggs. “And considering that Twilight’s on pretty good terms with Pinkie, this all works out to be one more reason not to let Pinkie find me. Speaking of which, I’d better head back to my shop. Find my mask, wash the syrup out of my coat, look up the nearest bookstore, y’know.”

Lyra snickered again, then cleared her throat. “Right, yeah. Um, hey, Lapis?”

Lapis paused. “Uh, yeah?”

“You know you can talk to us, right?” Lyra waved a hoof at herself and Bon Bon, who nodded. “If there’s stuff going on, we’re happy to hear about it.”

No, Lapis thought, I can’t. He smiled anyway, and found to his surprise that he meant the gratitude he was trying to convey. “Thanks, Lyra. That means a lot. And you too, Bon Bon.”

“Anytime,” Bon Bon replied. “Now go wash up, quick, before that syrup hardens.”

Lapis grinned, then made for the door, pausing only briefly to glance up and down the street for any sign of Pinkie. Then, he hurried on his way.

The mask, as it turned out, was on the floor just inside the shop’s front door. As best as Lapis could tell, it had slipped out when he’d slung his saddlebags over his shoulder that morning. Lapis took a few seconds to remove one of the smaller coat-hooks from his doorframe, bolting it instead to the inside of his bag. Then, he tied the mask’s strap to the hook in a quick slip-knot before washing the syrup out of his face and heading back out. Clumsy? Yes. Overkill? Absolutely. But with any luck…
Nope. If I think that out loud, I’ll jinx it.

The rest of the day was busy, but otherwise uneventful. Lapis managed to get to bed early, which was good, because the star-bear did, in fact, arrive that evening.
Lapis was sound asleep, and the giant star-bear’s first footstep had still rattled him right out of bed. He wandered out of his home, bleary-eyed and blinking, and stopped dead in his tracks at the sight of the thing.
In short, it was a bear the size of a blimp, with a deep-blue, translucent coat that twinkled with false stars. It raised its forepaw, and Lapis saw the air that the thing displaced ruffle the manes of the ponies cowering before it, Trixie among them - but, to Lapis’ relief, the monster didn’t swipe at them. Instead, with a gesture like opening a pair of finger-scissors, it snapped a rope that had been tying two of its toes together.
Trixie seemed to have done her best to stop the creature - and her best, it seemed, wasn’t nearly good enough. Lapis had sat down on his porch in a state of shock, his mindset shifting into a bizarre calm as he tried to figure out which portion of the town would be quickest to rebuild.

Then Twilight stepped out of her library, visibly nervous but determined. Her horn flared with the translucent, almost gel-like coating of her magic, and after a few moments, the bear swayed and began to look drowsy, almost drunk. And, for a brief, blissful moment, Lapis had thought that he wouldn’t have anything unusual to attend to the next day.

Then a second coat of magic wrapped around Twilight’s horn, and the entire top of Ponyville’s water tower casually tore itself free of its wooden supports with no more ceremony than a wet, crackling crunch. Lapis knew that kind of crunching noise all too well: it was the sound of old lumber turning into new mulch, and it was bad news for his ability to get much rest tomorrow.
The problem only got worse when it became clear that Twilight wasn’t planning on keeping the top of the water tower. Lapis made a deliberate point of not thinking about how Twilight had milked all those cows so quickly, but he couldn’t stop himself from wondering what kind of magical strength she had to possess in order to lift the entire star-bear, with milk-filled water tower, and then carry it all the way back into the Everfree.

Only once the star-bear was well out of sight did Twilight’s horn finally go dark, Twilight almost collapsing from the exertion. After that, it wasn’t long until the rest of the town erupted in cheers, and the blue showmare excused herself with a few parting shouts, a smoke bomb, and an impressively fast gallop. None of the ponies seemed particularly to mind that they were now sans-water tower, nor were any of them particularly bothered by the fact that there had just been a blimp-sized ursine casually wandering into Ponyville. Instead, they were all cheering on the mare who had saved the day: Twilight Sparkle, protege to the Princess and legal custodian of the three unreturned library books which sat, quiet and waiting, in the basement of Lapis’ house.

…Huh. Here I’d thought that Nightmare Moon was the scariest thing that could happen to Ponyville, but yeah, nope. And neither was the star-bear, not by a long way - for Lapis, the most terrifying presence in Ponyville had just become Twilight McBookface Sparkle.

I gotta do something about those library books.

Or maybe…

When Lapis woke up the next morning, it was with a goal in mind. He needed to get the library books back into Twilight’s collection as soon as possible - but, he also needed to do it in such a way that Twilight didn’t see him, and her exorbitant overdue-book fines were paid in full, or otherwise dealt with.

At this point, it’s pretty clear that if Twilight actually wants to hunt me down, she probably can. The only thing I can do to stop her from doing so, Lapis thought, setting his jaw as he clambered out of bed, is to make sure she doesn’t have a reason to hunt me down. And that means I either need to pay those fines, or find some other way to make them disappear.

Unfortunately, coming up with the goal was one thing, and coming up with a plan that accomplished that goal was another. And if there was one thing Lapis knew about planning, it was that planning was very much an after-coffee task. So, yawning, he wandered out into the front room, grinning drowsily as he stepped across the woolen rug on the floor and sat in his chair by the window.

Lapis had woken up late today, but it looked like he wasn’t the only one - there were a fair number of pedestrians out and about with their manes still messy, and fewer of them in total than what was normal. Huh. Wonder if the Corner Cafe’s open yet… actually, if the sun’s this high, it might be…

He glanced toward his kitchen, briefly running through the steps it would take to whip himself up some coffee and an omelet. I could have it done in no time flat… but not today. I can have an off-day, every once in a while.

Nodding, Lapis stood up, slung his saddlebags over his back, and set off for the Corner Cafe, hanging a ‘Temporarily Closed’ sign on his door. Besides, if Lyra and Bon Bon are there, it’ll give me a chance to bounce some ideas off of Lyra and Bon Bon. And if they’re not… well, I get to enjoy a good breakfast without making it myself, then I find Nikki, and then I find out where to buy myself a cloak with a hood.

The dirt streets of Ponyville in the late morning were a little quieter than usual, but not by much. There were still plenty of ponies out and about, grouped together in twos and threes, the pastels of their coats reminiscent of the clothes of a human crowd. If Lapis closed his eyes, he could almost pretend he was back on campus - their voices were human, the topics of conversation familiar, their tones friendly, excited, warm…

“…so then she passed me the muffin, and I was like…”

“…I told her not to bug the poor mare, but you know Yellow Petal…”

“…did you see this year’s batch?! I think they might be the best Ponyville’s ever seen - I can’t wait for the cider!”

-and then Lapis opened his eyes, and he was back in Ponyville again, inside a world that was almost literally made to appeal to his seven-year-old little sister. Man, what she’d give to be here instead of me…
Something in his chest ached, just for a moment. Right. Focus.

Lapis blinked, shook his head, and started keeping an eye out for any of the main characters, doing his best to tune out the growing warmth of the summer morning. Luckily, it seemed he was in the clear until Pinkie decided to show up - for some reason, Rainbow wasn’t usually in the sky before about 10:00, Twilight was almost never out of her library at all, and Lapis had yet to see Applejack outside the Apple family farm- well, except for the Bunny Incident.

That left Rarity and Fluttershy, and as far as Lapis could tell, both of them were non-issues. Lapis was a lot of things, but “picky about clothes” wasn’t one of them, especially given that he was wearing a fur coat 24/7 - so he had no reason to visit Rarity’s clothing shop, and she was apparently kept busy enough by her own orders that she had no time to wander around and potentially spot him. And Fluttershy…

Lapis slowed momentarily, frowning. Fluttershy. Huh. You know, I don’t think I’ve seen her at all since the Summer Sun Celebration. Wonder what she gets up to…

As casually as he could, Lapis scanned the streets around him for any sign of Fluttershy, but didn’t catch so much as a glimpse of her. Well, whatever she does, I guess she’s not doing it around me. So… I guess that’s not a problem, yet?

When Lapis arrived at the Corner Cafe, one glance through the window confirmed that Lyra and Bon Bon weren’t there. He stopped inside just long enough to get an omelet and some fries in a to-go bag, then headed back to his shop, only pausing inside for just long enough to hang his saddlebags by the door. Then, he headed straight into his closet, made his way into the basement, and cracked open what he deemed to be the most potentially important of his three books - The Horn is Quicker than the Carriage: Transportation for the Time-Pressed Unicorn. He quickly flipped to the chapter about teleportation spells, and stared glumly down at the imposing wall of magical terminology that waited on its first page.

This, Lapis thought, is going to suck.

Then, grimacing, he pulled over the notebook left behind by the previous owner of the workshop, levitated an inkwell and quill over from the corner of the workbench, and began to copy down the chapter.

Priority one was simple: return the library books, and pay off the fines. Unfortunately, Lapis hadn’t checked out these books for entertainment purposes - a lot of the information in them would likely be helpful stuff, on the off-chance he figured out how to understand any of it. So, he needed to return the books, but keep the information in them - and until he managed to figure out enough magical terminology to decipher the texts, the best he could do was to copy them down. By hand… or, well, by horn.

Over the next hour, Lapis learned a few things about writing with an inkwell and quill. Lesson one was that the ink would blot the page if you left the quill in one spot for too long, while lessons two and three were that moving the quill too quickly would either leave a trail of ink too thin to easily read, or else simply puncture the paper. On top of that, the quill would manage to write down an average of five words before it needed dipped in the inkwell again - seven if they were shorter words, and three if they were long.

All in all, by the time Lapis finished copying down the chapter, he was about ready to crumple the quill into a ball and stomp on it. You know what? As far as The Totaled Theories of Harmonick Resonance goes, I think I’ve got Mend-Alls pretty much under control. And as thematically appropriate as it would be to copy down a book written in Ye Olde Shakespearean Englishe by way of a quill, I think I’d rather jump into a barrel of gasoline with a lit match.
Having made up his mind, Lapis levitated The Totaled Theories and The Horn is Quicker up off the workbench, and went back upstairs to return them to his saddlebags. He opened the closet door, walked past the disorganized pile of pencils sitting atop the counter, returned the books to his saddlebags-

Wait.

Lapis slowly, creakily turned his head, making sure he’d seen what he thought he’d seen. Sure enough, sitting there on top of his counter were about a half-dozen perfectly serviceable charcoal pencils, complete with pink rubber erasers.

Lapis’ eyelid twitched. He shut his eyes, taking a slow, deep breath, and did his best to suppress the scream of frustration that was trying to worm its way from his throat.

Can I please, he thought, do one thing without making a stupid mistake that ends up costing me twice as much time as it needs to?! First it’s The Reference Guide, then it’s not managing to copy down the right words from that magical glossary, and now this?!

“I need,” Lapis muttered, “to get this mess under control.”

A sudden, brief series of quiet scraping noises shattered Lapis’ composure, and he snapped his eyes open to stare around the room, looking for the source of the noise. But to his increased exasperation, he couldn’t see anything different. And now there’s mice or something in my roof. Great. Just great.

Lapis groaned, then levitated the top pencil off the stack on his desk and hurried back into his closet, keen to finish copying down the chapters on invisibility and disguise from his last book as quickly as possible. And as he shut the door, it only slightly rattled the perfectly-aligned, pyramidal stack of pencils that, only a few moments before, had been a disorganized, scattered pile.

By the time Lapis finished copying down the most relevant-seeming sections of Shape-Shifting and Other Ways of Escaping the Sordid, it was noon. I didn’t mean to take a day off, but… well, I guess I have, huh?

There were, as it turned out, a few clothing shops in Ponyville besides the Carousel Boutique. One of them, the Stallion’s Saddlebag Store, sold simple brown waxed-canvas “rain-cloaks” in a whole variety of sizes, which luckily included Lapis’. Since it was summer, all the winter wear was discounted, so Lapis also bought himself a dark blue scarf and a matching beanie. Winter probably won’t be for a while yet, but it pays to be prepared.

Lapis returned to his shop to stow away his purchases, then sat back at his table and tried to plan his next move. Given that my ‘disguise’ is a rain-cloak, I’d probably better wait until the next time it rains to wear it, or else I might as well just wear a sign that says “up to no good.” He glanced out the window at the sky, and was pleasantly surprised to see a large group of pegasi pushing bundles of heavy gray clouds into the sky. Huh. Guess I’m in luck.

Somepony knocked on his door, and Lapis frowned, peeking at the window. Wonder who that could be… It's the Mayor? Wonder what she’s here for… Oh yeah, right.

Lapis wandered over to the door and pulled it open. “Afternoon, Ms. Mayor. Is this about the water tower?”

“It’s about the water tower,” Mayor Mare confirmed, nodding as she stepped inside. She was dressed in her standard attire - a plain white collar that looked like it belonged on a dress shirt, held in place by a puffy cyan ascot. “That was Ponyville’s main stockpile of fresh water, and it’s gone. I’ve got some pegasi bringing in a downpour right now, just to make sure everypony’s lawns are watered and their rain barrels are full for the next few days, but that water tower still needs to get fixed as soon as it possibly can. Luckily, the dimensions were on file, so we were able to place an order with the smith-ponies down near the Big Apple. They should have the sections for a new container built in a few days, but in the meantime… well, in the meantime, we need to make sure the support struts are stable enough to support the new container.”

Lapis shook his head. “I haven’t gotten the chance to check it out yet, but I’d be willing to bet the tops of those struts are more like mulch than timber at the moment. Are there any professional carpenter-ponies in Ponyville?”

“Oh, yes, there’s a group of them, but, well…” Mayor Mare grimaced and waved a hoof, her ears flopping back a little. “They aren’t cheap, and they certainly aren’t fast, either. I can’t imagine harvesting timber from the Everfree is a quick-and-easy prospect, but still, I’d much prefer to pay for your services than for theirs, if that’s at all possible.”

Lapis nodded, grabbing his saddlebags from the side of the door. “Yeah, I’ve honestly been expecting something like this ever since last night. I’ll take a look, and drop by Town Hall tomorrow to tell you what I find, but I can’t promise you’ll like what I find out.”

“Your expert opinion is all I ask,” Mayor Mare replied, smiling. “Oh, and of course I’m not asking you to do this for free. On paper, this is getting recorded as a consultation, so… here’s your consultation fee.” She reached into her saddlebags, then produced a hefty sack of bits.

Lapis picked it up with his magic, blinking in surprise at the weight of the sack. “That should be more than enough. There’s a couple of things I’d like to wrap up around here first, but I’ll probably head out pretty soon after.”

“Oh, of course! Don’t let me get in the way!” Mayor Mare chuckled, then headed out. “I’ll see you tomorrow!”

“See you then!” Lapis replied, shutting the door behind her. He waited a few seconds, then pumped his hoof. This is perfect. The weather’s right for me to wear the rain-cloak, visibility will be poor enough that Twilight will have a hard time seeing me, and I even have an alibi!

Grinning, he grabbed the rain-cloak out of the closet and slung it onto himself over top of his saddlebags. It was a little big, but that was intentional - with the hood up, it was impossible to tell what Lapis looked like, unless you managed to glance under the hood. All I gotta do is check out the water tower until it starts raining, then drop by the Golden Oak and hide the books somewhere inside. When Twilight or whoever else finds them, she’ll think they were just misplaced or misfiled or something instead of stolen, and presto! Charges dropped, fees forgiven, and I’ve gotten off scot-free.

Lapis tied the collar of the cloak shut around his neck, leaving the hood down for the time being, and set off for the water tower.

The water tower, it turned out, was a fairly isolated spot in comparison to the rest of Ponyville. It was near the cattle barn, but there weren’t many other buildings nearby - most of that space was taken up by trees with dark, dense foliage.
It took Lapis a while to find a ladder up to the water tower, but once he did, it turned out that the structure was in much better shape than he’d thought. The basic shape of the structure was like a platter atop a wooden stand, with the actual water container mounted atop the platter. The stand of the structure was fine, and the platter was sturdy, if weathered. But on top of that platter was a short, thick wooden ring that had likely been used to brace the container still atop the tower, and that was splintered beyond repair.

Or beyond repair that’ll take less than a day or two, anyway, Lapis thought. The force of Twilight’s magic lifting the container free had more than just broken or torn the wood - it had shattered, almost like a tree struck by lightning. It reminded Lapis of when Bon Bon had jumped through his window, except this time there was no Princess Celestia to make everything better again for the apparent fun of it.

A fat, heavy raindrop caught Lapis right on the tip of his muzzle, and he blinked in surprise, then quickly put his hood up as he checked the skies. The pegasi had done their job, and now the entirety of Ponyville’s sky was covered by a gloomy gray blanket of rainclouds. The rain was starting to come down, now, and from the top of the water tower Lapis could see the last few denizens of Ponyville hurrying indoors.

Lapis wasted no time getting down the ladder to the water tower, and toward the Golden Oak. Normally, you wouldn’t catch him high up anywhere in the first place, especially not when the weather was this bad - as far as he was concerned, that was basically asking to get struck by lightning. But since the weather in Equestria seemed, for the most part, to be artificial, he’d guessed that there was enough of a difference between a rain-cloud and a storm-cloud that pegasi could choose to put one in the sky, and not the other.

Still, Lapis thought, climbing that ladder in the rain, without fingers, isn’t exactly the safest thing in the world either. He was within sight of the Golden Oak now, and the downpour had begun in earnest, the rain beating down on the streets in sheets, and kneading the dirt roads of Ponyville into dense, slick coats of sucking mud. Lapis was glad he didn’t need to worry about wet socks, but even still, he’d need a good, long shower once he got back to his shop - his hooves were filthy already.

Lapis paused under the archway, trying to work out his plan of attack. He hadn’t been able to find Nikki in time, and even if she were here, Lapis sincerely doubted she could fly in this rain. Right now, he was basically going in blind.

So, he thought, walking toward the library as casually as he could, that’s what I’ll need to fix first. I’ll peek through the window, see if Twilight’s in there, and if she’s not… well, I’ll stuff the books behind some other books on the shelves, and that’ll be that.

Lapis picked a window - the small one on the front door of the building - and started forward, raising his head to peek through. He set his hoof on the doorstep, then paused as he noticed the stone beneath his hoof was a different color than usual. Huh. Was that always purple, or-

Lightning struck right beside him, and Lapis yelped, tucking into a roll as he dove away from the site of impact. Mud splattered across his cloak and face, and Lapis wiped it off his eyes as quickly as he could.

“Oh, my!” a voice said. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you! Are you alright?”

“Doing great,” Lapis replied, looking up. “Thanks for ask-” …Oh, shit.

“That’s a relief. I only teleported down because my Bag-Checking Charm found my missing library books in your saddlebags, and I guess I got a little overexcited to check them back in… Wait, what’s the matter?” Twilight asked, cocking her head and blinking in confusion, a dome of purplish light hanging over her head like an umbrella. “And why are you dressed like that?”

“Uh…” Lapis said. “Because it’s raining!”

“Well, why not just use an Umbrella Spell?” Twilight asked, cocking an eyebrow.

“…I never learned?”

“But everypony learns an Umbrella Spell,” Twilight replied, squinting. “With that cloak, I'd almost think you were up to no good... Wait a minute! You’re the pony who stole the library books, aren’t you?!”

Shit! “Whoa-whoa-whoa, I didn’t steal anything! I just borrowed these books before you showed up in the building, and now I’m looking to put them back. That’s all.”

“Uh-huh. Then how come the Bag-Checking charm didn’t find any bits in your bag?” Twilight asked, tucking her ears back as Lapis retreated before her advance. “If you just wanted to return them, then you must’ve known there were fines on those books. And why don’t you have a library account, either?! If you were just ‘borrowing’ those books, then they would’ve been filed under a library account- hey, wait! Get back here!”

Lapis wasn’t sure when he’d started galloping away, but now that he’d started, stopping seemed like a worse idea by the second. His thought process was a continuous stream of swearing as he sprinted away from the library, Twilight’s mud-splattering hoofsteps quickening to a gallop behind him. Lapis slipped and nearly fell as he hung a right, and his eyes widened as he saw that his path was blocked by a stack of barrels. He steered around them, then hurried down the road as quickly as he could-

There was a muffled whump, and Lapis felt his eardrums pop as the air pressure shifted around him. Then, to his terror, a number of the barrels he’d just ran past went flying over his head, catapulted into the sky by what Lapis knew had to be Twilight’s spell. Holy-!

No time to gawk! Lapis snapped his head back to the road again, and saw that it grew narrower ahead, the edges blocked by a pair of wagons, buried up to their spokes in the mud. Okay. Choke point. Maybe I can block it, buy myself some time-

Swallowing, Lapis snatched one of the barrels out of the air, his own brown magic wrapping around its sides. Then, he pulled it back toward himself, gritting his teeth as his horn stung with the effort. He stood it upright between the two wagons, then pressed it into the mud by about two inches - not deep enough to jump over, but deep enough that it’d be a pain to move. He did the same with another barrel, and then two more at once on the other side of the street. He got a telekinetic grasp on the last barrel just before he passed through the narrow opening in his blockade, and slammed it into place behind him.

“Oh!” he heard Twilight groan in frustration. Lapis didn’t grin - he had no doubt that Twilight would find a way past the barrels soon, he needed to come up with a new plan. I gotta either get her to lose track of me, or just evade her until she runs outta steam. Maybe if I turn into this alley, she won’t get over the barrels until I’m out of sight…

Lapis turned left just as another flash of purple light erupted from the other side of the barrels, and Twilight reappeared on his side of the barricade, in front of it by about ten feet. She stumbled, swaying a little - then shook her head clear and started chasing after Lapis again. Well, there goes that plan - Whoa!

Vines were sprouting out of the mud in front of Lapis, trying to wrap themselves around his hooves like tentacles as he ran across them. They got longer and longer as he stared, terrified, down the alley, looking for a way around - but there were only the walls of the buildings to either side. The wall to his left had trash cans, but the right wall was bare brick and mortar - please, please please let this work with hooves-!

Lapis veered left, then sprinted forward and to the right - and in the moment just before he hit the right wall, he jumped, sprinting forward across the wall, praying that his momentum would hold until he got over the patch of vines. Then Lapis ran out of wall, yelping as he fell forward and sideways-

He landed with a heavy thud on his left side, his head slapping into the mud with a thick squelch. And now my saddlebags need washed, too. Groaning, Lapis hauled himself to his hooves, then kept moving forward, turning his head to the side as he charged through a thick patch of trees, the signature purple flash of Twilight’s teleport behind him only spurring him on. New plan, new plan, come on…

Lapis glimpsed a familiar-looking ladder ahead and to his right, and suddenly realized where he was. Okay, that’s crazy, but it’s better than nothing. Let’s do it. Grimacing, Lapis ran to the side of the water tower, hunching his head against the pouring rain as he climbed.

In a few seconds that took minutes, he reached the top, and pulled the ladder up behind him just before Twilight emerged, huffing and puffing, from the treeline, the Umbrella Spell still hanging over her head. Lapis hadn’t realized until then just how out-of-breath he was, and suddenly it was all he could do not to collapse over the edge of the water tower’s platter.

“Is he… part goat or something?” Twilight panted, staring around herself almost frantically for any sign of Lapis. Then she frowned, before slowly looking up.

Lapis pulled himself away from the edge, straining to hear anything over the roar of the pouring rain. Please. Please. Just let me be done. Please.

“You know I can see the ends of the ladder from down here, right?” Twilight called up.

Oh for fuck’s sake. Lapis looked at the ladder, and sure enough, it was too big to fit entirely on the water tower’s “platter” - several rungs’ worth stuck off at either end.

“Don’t make me come up there!” Twilight called back again. “The longer you’re out in the rain, the more likely those books are to get damaged!”

…Yeah, the mud’s probably ruined them. Or… Oh, wait, no, I kept them in my other saddlebag. They’re good.

I think.

Twilight huffed. “Fine! I’m getting a ladder, and when I come back, it’ll be with backup!”

The sound of stomping hoofsteps echoed up to Lapis’ ears. Carefully, he peeked back over the side, and saw that Twilight was indeed marching back toward the rest of Ponyville. Okay. Okay, now’s my chance.

Carefully, as quietly as he could, Lapis levitated the ladder off the edge of the platter, braced it up against the side, and climbed onto the top few rungs. Then, after double-checking to make sure Twilight was gone, Lapis started to slide down the ladder, ignoring the pop as the wooden structure shifted in the wind-

Except Lapis wasn’t going down. He was sliding down the glowing-purple ladder, alright, but he was still going up, back over the side of the platter, where Twilight was waiting with a smug grin, her mane and coat bone-dry thanks to the Umbrella Spell still hanging over her head.

“Now,” she said, “let’s try that conversation again.”

And that was when Lapis ran out of ladder, and the ground rushed up to meet him-

“Whoooaaa-!”

“Oh no-!”

The ladder slid into place beneath him out of nowhere, still glowing purple as Lapis hit it, and suddenly everything went dark-

“…Ow,” Lapis wheezed. “Oh, everything hurts…”

He was on the ground, the ladder broken beneath him, his impact cartoonishly imprinted into the mud around him. Lapis didn’t stop to question his survival. Instead, he stumbled into the trees as quickly as he could, but he tripped on a root and fell over again only ten feet past the treeline.

Grimacing, he sat back up, trying to shake the fog out of his head and looking back at the water tower, squinting and shielding his eyes from the rain with one hoof. Twilight was trying to lift the broken pieces of the ladder out of the mud, gritting her teeth and straining as they trembled a few inches above the ground - but as he watched, the coating of her purple magic on the ladder’s parts flickered, then vanished entirely. A few seconds later, the Umbrella Spell above Twilight’s head disappeared with a crackling hiss, Twilight yelping as sparks shot off her horn.

Is she… outta juice? She’s outta juice.

…I got away.

Lapis hauled himself onto his hooves, grimacing as a jolt of pain shot through his knees, then turned to leave…

“…Help!”

Lapis froze, frowning and shutting his eyes, his ears tucking back inside his hood. “Don’t say that,” he muttered. Then, he turned back around to look.

Twilight had huddled down on top of the platter, but Lapis could still see that she was absolutely drenched, howling gusts of wind chilling the sheets of rain even further as they pounded down on her. She was shivering, and as Lapis watched, her horn flickered with magic - then sparks shot off it as she grunted again, her tank still as empty as it had been a few moments before.

“Help,” she called again, her voice less certain this time. “Anypony?”

Cold. Oh, that's cold.
Twilight was shivering so much, she almost didn’t feel the thump beneath her hooves. She wrenched her eyes open, and for a second she couldn’t believe what she was seeing.

It was the top few rungs of the ladder, gripped in a coat of telekinetic magic that was either almost invisible, or else just matched the brownish color of the ladder’s wood almost perfectly. As she watched, the ladder shifted, then settled against the ground below with a solid, reassuring thunk.

“Oh, thank Celestia,” she muttered, slowly heaving herself to her hooves. They were still shivering, and Twilight tried again to cast her Heart-Warming spell, wincing as her horn sparked again with mana-burn. Really, Twilight? Three teleportation spells in a ROW, the night after you horn-pressed an Ursa Minor and a water tower full of milk? You’re not Celestia, you know. You have limits.

Twilight continued to shiver as she slowly climbed down the water tower, being as careful as possible to leave herself no chance of slipping whatsoever. It was a miracle that other unicorn, the book-thief, had survived the fall, and she didn’t trust her luck to grant her two miracles in one day. So, so cold. Oh, that’s cold.

When Twilight finally set her hooves on mostly-solid ground, she was met with another surprise. There, on a stick jutting up out of the mud, hung the stranger’s cloak. Its outside was covered in mud, but Twilight quickly discovered that the inside was almost dry.
Twilight wasted no time slinging the cloak about herself, pulling the cord close around her neck and raising the hood. She felt warmer already, but she was still keen to get back to the Golden Oak as quickly as she could - Spike could have a roaring fire and a cup of shimmerberry tea ready in less than ten minutes, and the combination sounded like just the thing she needed to get some body heat and magic back.
Still, she hesitated as she looked around at the treeline. She wasn’t sure the mystery pony was still there, but still…

“Thank you!” she called. Nopony replied.

When she got back to the Golden Oak a few minutes later, she found the three missing books sitting on the floor, utterly mud-free, just a few feet beyond the welcome mat. They, too, were almost dry.

The first thing that Lapis did, when he woke up the following morning, was sneeze.

The second thing was that he went to go blow his nose, as were the third and fourth.

Lapis hated colds. He especially hated them when he knew exactly why he’d caught them, and what he could’ve done - but didn’t do - not to catch them. If he’d kept his cloak on, instead of hanging it on a stick at the base of the freshly-fixed ladder. If he’d gone straight back to his shop, instead of galloping to the Golden Oak from the water tower and then to his shop from the Golden Oak. If he’d done either of those things, he’d be as healthy as a horse.

Hardy har har. Thank you, English language, you’re hilarious.

After a hot shower, an omelet, a mug of coffee, and a glass of water, Lapis was feeling close enough to better that he was up to visiting the Town Hall. It was a beautiful morning - the sunrise was all rose-gold clouds, on blue skies so bright and clear that Lapis half-expected them to shimmer. The breeze was just crisp and fast enough to wake him up, but not so cold as to make him shiver - while the sunlight was warm without baking him, just warm enough to soothe the ache in his bruised hip.

There were a couple of different falls that could’ve been responsible for his hip, but Lapis wasn’t really feeling up to playing the blame game - no matter what he picked, the blame always ended up back on himself. The same was true for his cold, and as Lapis grew closer to the doors of Town Hall, he found himself running over the details of his chase with Twilight Sparkle, over and over again.

The second-biggest mistake Lapis had made, as far as he could tell, was fixing the ladder for Twilight to climb down on. That ladder had been broken before he’d moved it, and repaired seamlessly afterward. If Twilight noticed that detail, connected it to Mend-All spells, and asked around town about any ponies who were extra-good at fixing stuff, Lapis was basically toast.

Then again, Lapis thought, she didn’t seem to have the firmest grasp on what spells most unicorns were familiar with using on a daily basis. I’ve never seen any pony but her using an Umbrella Spell, Lyra included. Maybe she’ll think Mend-Alls are another thing she thinks all unicorns are familiar with - though, I guess I can’t rely on a 'maybe'.

The runner-up for second-biggest mistake was delivering the books back to Twilight’s house. If she did have some spells that did detective work, Lapis had basically left his hoofprints all over those books - though, he wasn’t sure if hoofprints were a method of identification used in Equestria. He hadn’t yet been asked to provide his, after all.

The biggest mistake, however, didn’t have any competitors. He’d talked to Twilight, directly. More than that, he’d quite possibly let her save his life, though he might’ve returned the favor, maybe. He’d returned the books, alright, but now Twilight had personal motivation to find him, and that was - in theory - infinitely worse than a trio of missing library books. Lapis didn’t think Twilight had seen his face, since he’d just caked everything but his eyes in mud - all the same, getting anywhere near Twilight was an absolute no, at least for however long it took for her memory to fade.

All that, and Lapis still wasn’t any closer to figuring out a fraction of what his damn horn could do. Twilight had teleported, created gusts of wind strong enough to throw barrels, and brought plants to life during their chase, and Lapis hadn’t been able to defend himself in any way but telekinesis and terrible parkour. He was under-equipped, under-prepared, and under-informed for where he was and what he needed to do. So… basically just test season all over again.

When Lapis walked into the Town Hall, he was quickly greeted by a secretary, who ushered him to a small side room. There, the Mayor was busy poking through a vaguely-familiar pile of brightly-colored wood scraps. Objects were piled in neat stacks against the front wall - a pile of identical starry-blue, wide-brimmed hats, a stack of matching cloaks, what looked like a curling iron, and some other boxy objects that Lapis couldn’t make out.

“Oh!” the Mayor said, quickly standing up. “Good morning, Lapis. I wasn’t expecting you over here so soon, I was just looking through the wreckage of that magician’s cart. We’ve been hoping she’d come back and claim it, but since she hasn’t… well, here in a few hours it’ll become legally identical to litter, and therefore becomes town property, so I thought I’d go ahead and see whether there was anything worth keeping out of a landfill. Are you alright? You’re limping a little.”

“I am?” Lapis asked, glancing back at his own flank in confusion. “Huh. Well, I slipped as I was getting off the ladder, but I didn’t think it was that bad. No, I’m all good, but I wish I could say the same for the brace - it’s a giant ring of wood on top of the, uh, plate-shaped part, and it’s splintered bad enough that repairing it would take me a good three days to fix. The rest of it is fine, but that brace needs fixed.”

Mayor Mare sighed. “Well, I suppose it could’ve been worse. Thank you, Lapis. I know being Ponyville’s repair-pony isn’t an easy job, and I know that my consultation was a lot to ask…” She paused, glancing around the room. “You know… why don’t you have a look around? There are a few things I’ve found in this wagon that aren’t completely tacky, and unless Ms. Lulamoon comes back in the next three-and-a-half hours, they’re town property… and since you’re a town employee, that’s legitimate enough reason for you to have something from the pile!”

“Oh,” Lapis said, blinking in surprise. “Uh, sure. Let me look around real quick. Thanks, Ms. Mayor.”

Mayor Mare chuckled. “Please, just call me Mare.” She got back to digging in the pile, and after a few moments, Lapis started looking through the stacks by the wall. He skipped over the robes, hats, and curling iron - “fairy-tale wizard” wasn’t really his style, and neither was a curled mane. Instead, he proceeded straight to the boxy objects.

The first in the stack was a simple wooden box, which by all accounts appeared to be empty. The second and third objects, however, were books - both the dustiest Lapis had ever seen, and so worn-down that he half-expected them to fall apart as he picked them up. One was a volume bound in faded black-and-yellow canvas, the cover of which had been hastily covered by star-painted tape and labeled “The Great and Powerful Trixie’s Tome of Untold Magical Secrets.” Lapis carefully removed the central strip of tape, and almost laughed aloud - underneath, the book’s genuine title was Magic 4 Dummies.

This is one of the books Lyra recommended for me, Lapis realized, and he shoved it into his freshly-cleaned saddlebag without a second thought, quickly grabbing the other book. This volume was bound in a dark brown substance which looked oddly like rubber, or possibly pleather. It certainly wasn’t genuine leather - the sheen of it was all wrong for that, as was the color.

Carefully, Lapis opened the book to the first page that had words on it, and began to read…

Lesson One, for any pony who picks up this book, is this: keep a notebook, and record everything.

There are no words or conventions in Equish, or any other language, that are capable of providing adequate emphasis to the sentence above. Should you develop genuine prowess in the science of artifice, you will rapidly construct devices with more components, static and moving, than you could ever hope to remember. Carving a label into each is one method of ensuring you remember their identity; however, the hardness of many metals mean that this method is best reserved for ponies who value neither their time nor their sanity.

As such, you will keep a notebook, in which you describe in complete detail the process by which you design, refine, and assemble your creations. In addition, you will draw diagrams, at every angle, face, and diagonal, of both the assembled and exploded configurations of your inventions. In these diagrams, you will label the size, material, and purpose of every plate, rod, and sheet, every nut, bolt, washer, screw, and stud.

I do not write the words “you will” as an order. I write them as a statement of fact: you will do these things not because I say you will, but because you will find it is the only way to practice artifice and retain your sanity…

Lapis snorted and rolled his eyes. “Sounds like my old Engineering 101 professor,” he muttered.

“What?” Mayor Mare said, sticking her head up from the pile of wood scraps.

“Nothing,” Lapis called back, and flipped to the next page, which contained example diagrams. He frowned as he examined them, then his eyes widened as he recognized the angles from which they’d been drawn. Lapis read on, and his jaw almost dropped as he found the first definitions…

Artifice is the practice of manipulating free-flowing mana via physical materials, rather than by the channelling of a unicorn’s will through the methods commonly referred to as a “spell.” Free-flowing mana, meanwhile, is the term used to describe magic that is ready to be put to use, whether it is drawn from the aether of Equestria or siphoned off a unicorn’s own reservoir by way of telekinetic grasping of a controlled-pulse mana siphon. A diagram of this device, with accompanying explanation, may be found on the following page…

A slow, wide grin spread across Lapis’ face. This doesn’t just sound like an engineering textbook. It is an engineering textbook - an entry-level guide to magical engineering.

I have half a degree in engineering. That's probably plenty.

“Find something you like?” Mayor Mare asked.

Lapis snapped the book shut, then deliberately tucked it into his saddlebags. “Yeah. Yeah, I think I did.”

I gotta get out of the house more often, he thought, and chuckled. And for the first time since he'd arrived in Equestria, he felt prepared.

“Dear Princess Celestia,” Twilight dictated, and then she paused. “…I don’t know, Spike, is this really a ‘Dear-Princess-Celestia’ problem?”

Spike hastily scribbled out a few words, then huffed. “Twilight, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but every week you write to the princess about your friendship drama. This is kind of a bigger deal.”

“But that’s different!” Twilight replied, waving a hoof. “I was specifically instructed to learn about friendship, and I’m informing her of exactly what I learned on a weekly basis. And in addition… well, I suspect she has other motives, but it would be rude of me to make assumptions about the Princess’ intentions-”

“C’mon, Twilight, just say it!” Spike said, spreading his arms. “You think she’s checking in on you to make sure you’re not turning into a hermit-pony again, like you were back in Canterlot when you found the prophecy!”

“What? No, I thought she might’ve been lonely,” Twilight said, cocking her head in confusion. She blinked, then clapped a hoof to her mouth as she realized what she’d said. “Don’t write that?”

“I won’t,” Spike replied. “But Twilight, whoever this unicorn is, he left you up a water tower. You! You fought Nightmare Moon and won-”

“I didn’t really fight her,” Twilight mumbled.

“-and he managed to strip away your magic and leave you stuck on a water tower, in the rain, without even an umbrella!”

Twilight sucked a breath in through her teeth, her ears tucking back. “Well… he didn’t really ‘strip away’ my magic, either.”

“What do you mean?” Spike asked, leaning past the side of his parchment and cocking an eyebrow.

“Well… I might’ve… sorta teleported while I was chasing him, and-”

Spike sighed, lowering the parchment and quill, his ear fins drooping in exasperation. “How many times?”

Twilight’s ears flopped back on her head, and she averted her eyes. “Three,” she muttered.

Spike slow-blinked, then rolled the parchment back into a scroll and tossed it over his shoulder. “Forget everything I just said.” He stood up from the chair, cracked his knuckles and back, then stumped off into the kitchen. “I’m making you a whole pot of shimmerberry tea, you’re going to drink it, and then you’re going to go to bed and not cast any spells tomorrow.”

He poked his head back through the doorway, shooting her a suspicious glare. “Any. Spells. Got it?”

“…Thank you,” Twilight replied. “But aren’t you still concerned about the water-tower thing?”

“Well, if it hadn’t put you in danger, I guess I’d kinda be impressed,” Spike replied. “He gave the books back, so he really didn’t mean to steal them, and I guess he just panicked when you accused him. And… well, I mean, if you were chasing this stallion the way you usually chase a loose book, then it’s kind of a miracle he managed to get away! …You didn’t get him, right?” Spike added, popping his head back into the room again, glancing around as if he expected to see a pony hog-tied and hanging from the ceiling.

“I almost did,” Twilight muttered, and then she sighed. “And that’s the problem. I almost got him really, really hurt, Spike. He was sliding down the ladder, and I thought, ‘Oh, I’ll just pull the ladder back up, that’ll stop him!’” Twilight pantomimed an empty-eyed, dull smile with the last sentence, then sighed, her ears flopping back on her head again. “Kinda forgot about gravity, and he slid off the end of the ladder. I was quick enough to catch him, but that’s about the same time my magic ran out, and, well…” Twilight paused, her ears cocking half-upright. “Huh.”

“What is it?” Spike asked, raising an eyebrow.

“You know… it’s the strangest thing, but I could’ve sworn that ladder was broken when my magic fizzled,” Twilight said, tapping her chin with a hoof. “But when he put it up to let me climb down, it was fixed. I think one of the books he returned might’ve been about… Mend-All spells, maybe? Let me just- ah!” Twilight yelped as a spark shot off her horn, raising a hoof to rub it gingerly.

Spike sighed. “Oh, no you don’t. Listen, Twilight, whatever he did to fix the ladder, it worked! He got you down, and now you’re safe, and now you’re staying in bed. And tomorrow, you’re going to find this pony and apologize to him.”

“That’s the thing - I can’t!” Twilight said, waving her hooves and falling backward into her bed. “I never got a good look at his face, it was covered in mud since the first time I saw him. I don’t know who he is, I don’t know what colors his coat or mane are, I don’t think I’ve ever even seen him before!”

“Of course you haven’t, Twilight,” Spike replied, walking back out of the room. “Ponyville’s a small town, but it’s not that small. There’s no way you’d get to know everypony in town!”

“Well, not yet, anyway,” Twilight muttered, turning to stare out her window. “I only just moved here.” She frowned, furrowing her brow in concentration. “Hmm… but Pinkie might.”

Spike popped his head back into the room. “Hey, I can make some chocolate chip cookies to go with that shimmerberry tea, if you want them.”

Twilight hesitated, glancing back and forth. "Spike, I wasn't really turning into a hermit-pony, was I?"

“...No,” Spike said, his eyes wide and innocent. “Would you like some chocolate chip cookies?”

Twilight’s ears tucked back, and she smiled as she gave a small nod. Spike grinned. “Gotcha. Comin’ right up!”

Spike withdrew from the room, and Twilight resumed staring out the window. Her brow furrowed in focus as she looked at the Sugarcube Corner Bakery, and tried to figure out what the least bizarre way to approach Pinkie for help would be.

Author's Note

Patch Notes
- In “The Griffon, Brushed Off,” the portrait of the mustached griffon is incorrectly described as a portrait of a mustached pony - this occurred because initial rendering happened before thematic appropriateness checks were ran, is now fixed (Winter Quill)
- In the same chapter, “weather” was incorrectly written as “waeather.” After extensive internal debate, the cause of this typo was determined to most likely be incorrect influence filtration, allowing the memetic entity known as “Ugandan Knuckles” to corrupt the word generation process. Typo corrected, influence filtration is now under stricter regulations (PlatinumPony)

Alrighty, and now here we are at the actual author's notes! Kinda rushed a little to get this one out, wanted to see what I could do. And as it turns out, that's this - a little lighter on the metaphorical-content side, but hey, I was throwing a lot of loose threads in there, I had to tie them up... and then immediately add a couple of new ones. Whoops.

So, the thing in this chapter that took me the longest time was probably storytime with Carrot Cake. I don't know exactly where my impression of Carrot Cake's character comes from, but the person he sounds like in my head is Jay's dad from LEGO Ninjago. Anyway, for whatever reason, I looked at Carrot Cake, and something about him just said, "This stallion tells stories," so I went ahead and tried to give him some physical comedy to share, and here we are!

If any of you are concerned that I don't do much editing when I make these - don't be, because the original Twilight-On-the-Water-Tower scene had some angst to it, for some reason. As in, implied-hypothermia, none-of-my-friends-can-hear-me-over-this-wind levels of angst. Completely jarring, totally different in tone from what I was going for, so I went right ahead and trimmed it back down to minimal levels of implied momentary worry. I think it fits much better, now.

And finally, I've got something to admit, something that concerns the whole "artifice" thing that Lapis is about to dive into. See, the thing about my knowledge of actual, real-world engineering is... well, I'm an English major.

I apologize in advance.

See you in the next one!

The Fifth One: The Trouble with Learning...

It was an extra-hot summer day in Ponyville. Cicadas were screaming in the trees, and any ponies who weren’t joyfully splashing around in the shallower parts of the nearby lake were either hurrying to their destinations on streets that shimmered with heat, or slumped on a couch in their living room with their preferred variety of cold drink. There wasn’t a wisp of cloud in the bright-blue sky - the only thing that came close to blocking the baking rays of the sun was the newly-repaired water tower. Even a few days ago, when the skies had been clouded with the smoke of a snoring dragon, Ponyville hadn’t felt nearly as clogged with heat.

In other words, it was one of the worst kinds of weather imaginable to be stuck up on somepony’s roof, painstakingly weaving clumps of thatch into the pegasus-shaped dent left by Rainbow Dash’s latest failed stunt. But Lapis Print had bills to pay, so there he was - sweat dripping off his open muzzle, panting for breath as the sun baked him in his fur, trying his best to remain lucid as he tied one more sheet of twine-bound straw onto the steep slope of the rooftop. This was his last request for the day, and also the only outdoor request he’d gotten all day, so he was hoping to get it done before noon - it wasn’t humid yet, but he’d heard that would change in the afternoon, and frankly Lapis didn’t feel like finding out whether Equestria’s apparent law of “no-serious-permanent-harm-ever” extended to protection from heatstroke.

Still, by the time he finished repairing the roof and climbed down from the ladder, Lapis had discovered something entirely new about being a pony - as he moved, his coat would rub against itself, the hairs sliding against each others’ length like the bristles of a brush. While this wasn’t normally a source of anything unexpected, when his coat was wet with something thicker than water - such as, say, sweat - and there was a large, flat object like the inside of his saddlebags pressing against his fur, the combination of frictions would end up working the liquid into a lather. For sweat, this turned out to vaguely resemble soap bubbles, with the key differences being a faint yellow tinge and a considerably worse smell. It was almost invisible on Lapis’ pale coat, but the smell certainly wasn’t, and the feeling of foam running down the outside of his barrel was jarring enough to spur Lapis on his way back to his house.

It wasn’t the first time that Lapis had been unsettled by some quirk of his new body. When he’d had his first big cleaning day, Lapis had initially been bewildered by the amount of short, coarse pet hair he kept finding on his bedsheets and in his dustpan. He’d been halfway considering the idea that there was a stowaway dog somewhere in his house, until he’d realized that the shed fur was the same color as his own coat. And even before that, there’d been the matter of using the bathroom - suffice to say, Lapis was glad to be a unicorn, because he did not want to find out how, or worse, if, ponies without horns used toilet paper.

When Lapis walked through his door, dreaming of a long, cold shower, his thoughts were instantly interrupted by the blast of cool air that greeted him as he passed the threshold. He shut the door behind him and took a few seconds to bask in the chill, lowering his head and raising his ears, a relieved grin spreading across his face. Ahh… oh, that’s so much better. Man, A/C is great…

…Wait. I don’t have A/C.

Lapis frowned, his brow furrowed, and then opened his eyes. What in the world…? He’d looked over the inside of his house the day he’d moved in, and had been disappointed not to find a single A/C vent inside. Lapis had assumed Equestria hadn’t invented air conditioning yet, and decided he would have to make do for the hotter and colder months of the year by opening his windows, or by using the wood-stoves in his bedroom and the kitchen - both were low-tech solutions, but both generally worked quite well. Not this well, though… What’s going on here?

One brief, cold shower and ten minutes later, Lapis had made his way into the closet behind the counter, and was staring warily at the hatch in the ceiling that presumably led to the attic. He’d checked and double-checked the rest of the house, basement workshop included, and hadn’t found any sign of whatever was keeping the place cool. He hadn’t been up in the attic yet, but now… well, it looked like it was time.

Lapis gripped the string with his magic - and flinched as a sharp tapping sound echoed through the building, releasing the string and glancing around. Not from up there… the window?

He left the closet, glancing around, and relaxed when he saw a familiar-looking pigeon staring through the window in his living room. Lapis opened the door, and Nikki flew inside at once, perching atop his head and wiping her brow with a wing.

“Hey, Nikki,” Lapis said. “Good timing - I was just about to check out my attic, and I could probably use an extra set of eyes. Care to help me look around?”

Nikki sighed and rolled her eyes, then nodded with a smirk. Lapis grinned, then returned to the closet, pulling down the hatch and unfolding the ladder. Then, after staring warily at the window into darkness that awaited him, he climbed into the attic.

The first thing that Lapis did, once he reached the top of the ladder, was take a deep breath and concentrate, quickly flicking through the sections he’d read of Magic 4 Dummies. Alright, let’s see… reach out like telekinesis, but without grasping anything. Then the incantation is… wait, what was it again? ‘In the darkness, grant me sight, call to me the gift of light?’

Lapis felt a faint tugging sensation within his chest, and a strain like great weight on his body as his telekinetic grip briefly latched onto something - then, color flared into existence on the other side of his eyelids. When he opened his eyes, a brown light was washing over his surroundings from his horn, dim but nonetheless bright enough to see by.

Lapis exhaled a relieved breath. Good, that worked. Magic, he’d learned, was a discipline with fuzzier boundaries than he was comfortable with - he still didn’t have a handle on the theory of what magic did, and he definitely wasn’t sure what made a spell more “advanced” in terms of how much of a unicorn’s magical reservoir it consumed.

The practice, however, was just within his reach: his ‘will’, the telekinetic fifth limb that was based in his horn, was something that had a finite strength and a point of exhaustion in much the same way his other four limbs did. But, along with a whole bunch of other differences that Lapis hadn’t bothered to memorize, his ‘will’ didn’t move in quite the same way as a leg - instead, it responded to his focus and intent. To touch something with his hoof, he had to reach out and touch it - to touch something with his magic, he had to think about touching it with magic, and mean to touch it with magic.

The trouble sat in thinking about things correctly, or rather, directing greater portions of the mind’s focus to think about processes with more numerous or complex steps than ‘pick up that pencil and write with it.’ This was where incantations came in: the words they used, or the languages they were in, weren’t strictly important. It was the concepts behind the words that mattered, the action that Spanish speakers meant when they thought “correr,” and that English speakers meant when they thought “run.” The point of incantations was to put the right concepts together in the right state of mind, and to demand as much of Lapis’ focus as possible when they were being thought or said: that way, by thinking through the incantation, he would end up guiding his ‘will’ in whatever directions he needed to in order to cast the spell.

And that, sadly, was just the tip of the iceberg. Brains, as it turned out, weren’t very good at keeping their processes in separate boxes, and magic was excessively effective at demonstrating this problem - if Lapis thought about picking up a glass with telekinesis, and while he was holding the glass, he thought ‘boy, I sure hope I don’t break this,’ then there would suddenly be a fair chance that he’d end up breaking that glass. On top of that, the strength of the spell and the chance his stray thoughts would interfere would be greater or worse depending on what emotion he was feeling at the time of casting, and the degree of both the emotion’s effect and the stray thoughts’ interference would be greater or worse depending on what type or school of magic he was casting.

There were multiple spreadsheets in the book, but the gist of it, so far as Lapis could tell, was this: for magic more advanced than telekinesis, a distracted, conflicted, and distressed unicorn would cast faultier, weaker magic than a focused, certain, and comfortable unicorn. Light magic, which included both the simple Hornlight spell and the more complex invisibility spells, was one of the stabler schools of magic in terms of standing up to stray thoughts; but, it was also a lot more affected by fear than a lot of other schools. So, if Lapis wanted to try escaping Pinkie or another protagonist via turning invisible, he’d almost certainly need to take a deep breath or two first.

Turning on a light in the dark, though, was easy, and Lapis didn’t need to devote any more thought to it than he already had as he started looking around his attic space. He’d known for a while now that his roof was made of treated copper plates, but whoever had painted the outside of the roof to look like ceramic shingles had, for some reason, done the same for the inside. As such, much of the light from Lapis’ horn was reflected back with a terracotta-orange tinge, and he had a hard time telling what color anything in the attic space actually was.

He could, however, still see, and that gave him ample reason to cock an eyebrow as he spotted the wooden slats forming a wide, solid box around one of his chimney-pipes. …Weird. There’s only two chimney-pipes up here - is that what those slats are for, to cover up the spot where the forge’s chimney connects to this one?

Nikki took flight and landed atop one of the slats, while Lapis levitated a crowbar up from the tool rack in the closet, and shortly managed to remove one of the box’s sides. It turned out, he was partially right - the forge’s chimney-pipe was, in fact, connected to this one. But on top of that…

“Well, what do we have here,” Lapis muttered, staring at the whirring tangle of rods, chains, and machinery that enclosed his chimney-pipe. Just about all of it connected to the copper panels of the roof, either via wooden braces that were bolted on, or else directly via what looked some kind of dark solder that glittered in Lapis’ Hornlight. More concerning, though, was the fact that - instead of connecting to anything that Lapis could see - most of the machinery instead vanished into a pit in the floor, deeper than the light of Lapis’ horn could penetrate.

Lapis briefly glanced at Nikki. If I asked her to fly down there and check it out, would it be safe? Would she even be able to tell me what it connected to? Maybe if I could get a lantern small enough for her to carry -

Nikki cocked an eyebrow at him. Then she scowled, and cuffed his ear with her wing.

“Ow,” Lapis muttered. “Okay, my bad. I’ll figure it out myself.” He headed back down the ladder and into the basement, grabbing the second of his two new books off the workbench: the apparently unnamed introduction to artifice. He climbed back up the basement stairs, but paused in the closet. …Is it just me, or is it a little quiet for this time of day?

Frowning, Lapis shut the false wall that led to the stairs, then exited the closet and looked around from inside his house. The streets of Ponyville looked about the same as they usually did, aside from the heat - the thing is, they were also empty.

Lapis grabbed his mask out of his saddlebag, then carefully stuck his head out the front door and looked up and down the street. To the left, there wasn’t a single pony in sight - to the right, however, Lapis spotted a tall pony in a brown cloak and hood walking down the road toward him. What little of the pony’s coat Lapis could see looked white with gray bands, and they wore a series of golden bracelets on their front-right leg. It was hard to explain exactly why, but beneath the cloak, this pony looked… sharper, somehow. More angular. It was difficult to explain, but something about the hard creases formed by this pony’s cloak gave Lapis the impression that, whoever they were, they weren’t nearly as soft and rounded as the average pony.

The cloaked figure turned to look at Lapis, and he realized with a shock that this pony’s eyes were solid, faintly-glowing pools of yellow light - it was almost like looking at a Jawa from Star Wars. Then, the strange pony blinked, and their gaze lost its glow, revealing a perfectly normal - if angular - pair of aquamarine-colored eyes.

Now, where have I seen her before, Lapis thought, trying to place the strange pony’s face in his head. …Oh, wait a second, it’s the zebra lady! Now I remember, this is the episode about not racially profiling people. Right. Cool, I shouldn’t need to worry about the protagonists today. Lapis gave the zebra a quick wave, which she returned after a moment’s hesitation, then he ducked back inside, tucking his mask back onto its hook in his saddlebag and grabbing one of the spare magic lanterns off his wall. Then, he brought the lantern up into the attic alongside his book.

“Hey, Nikki,” he said, quickly opening up the book on artifice and setting the lantern down by the arrangement of mechanisms. “Could I ask you to help me look for weird symbols on any of the copper parts? I get the feeling they’re there, but they’ll definitely be a little small for me to spot on my own.”

Nikki nodded, then flew up onto one of the machine’s brackets, taking care not to catch her wings in any of the moving parts. Lapis, meanwhile, was busy looking the machine over with more than a little interest. He’d been hoping that artifice would be a bigger help to him, but it turned out, he needed a lot of metal to make anything - sure, there was a whole forge in his basement, but he didn’t have the raw material to make any parts, to the best he could do for now was find other machinery and see if he could cobble something together from spare parts. And that meant first, he had to figure out what parts counted as “spare.”

The big thing that grabbed his attention was a copper rod almost like a pipe, that was soldered directly to the roof, but then ran directly into the depths of the pit. The part of the rod nearest the ceiling was enclosed between a whirring set of silvery semicircles on bicycle chains: the bicycle chains were rotating in synchrony, in such a way that the semicircles came together near the top of the pole to form complete hoops that traveled about two feet down the copper rod before separating, then heading back up the outsides of the chains.

“Huh,” Lapis muttered. “Well, the copper parts are obviously copper, and I think these silver-looking hoops are actually… aluminum?” He paused, then briefly looked over the relevant section in the book. “Yep, the big three metals for artifice are copper, aluminum, and iron. Runed copper conducts magic, runed aluminum pushes magic away, and runed iron sucks it in… any iron in here?”

Lapis briefly looked around the attic space, and grinned as he saw a narrow series of iron rods running up and down the length of the roof, almost like support beams. Closer inspection of the rods revealed that each was inscribed with a pair of runes, which some quick referencing in the book identified as an activation primary rune, offset by a diminishing modifier rune. “So, the iron rods are runed, and they’re trying to pull in any magic that gets too near to them, but this diminishing rune is weakening that pull by…” Lapis quickly checked over the spreadsheet of runes. “…just about enough that they can’t pull magic out of a pony, or out of the copper sheets.”
Nikki touched down on Lapis’ head, then pecked at an angular depression in one of the copper sheets - upon closer inspection, Lapis found the depression to be another activation rune, but painted over with the ceramic-like paint that covered the rest of the shingles’ surface. “…These copper sheets are runed too, meaning that they’re acting as magical conductors. The iron rods act like magnets, pulling any free-flowing mana into the copper of the roof… and from there…”

Lapis returned to the copper rod at the center of the room, and this time, he didn’t need Nikki’s help to spot the activation rune indented into the rod’s surface. “From there, the magic is distributed along all the pieces of copper that are touching, including this rod, as evenly as possible. Like air in a balloon… except these aluminum hoops repel magic. They close around the rod, then travel down, repelling any magic that gets near them…”

The penny dropped, and Lapis grinned again. “They’re pushing the magic down the rod, like squeezing yogurt out of a tube - this rod, these hoops, they’re like a pump! This entire section, plus the roof, is designed to gather magic from the surrounding area without harvesting it from any ponies, then to pump it down this rod and into…”

Lapis blinked, then frowned. “Into… what?” He looked again at the copper shingles of his roof, and suddenly felt a chill as he realized he had no idea why the pony who built this house wanted to accumulate magic desperately enough to automate the process. What he did know, though, unsettled him even further - between the wooden covering for the machines, the ceramic-colored paint on the copper roofing, and the hidden forge in this building’s basement, Lapis suspected that the builder of this house had done everything in their power to hide the fact that they were accumulating ambient magic. It could be that every house in Ponyville had similar mechanisms, and that was how all their stoves worked, but…

Slowly, carefully, Lapis levitated the lantern off the floor, then began to lower it down the pit in the attic floor. Nikki peered over his shoulder as Lapis followed the gleaming copper rod down, down, and further down, until -

Someone knocked on Lapis’ door, and he flinched, dropping the lantern in surprise. It only fell a few inches before clattering to a stop, and a quick glance down the pit confirmed that it had hit the bottom - the copper rod, however, turned at a ninety-degree angle and continued out of sight. Lapis sighed, half relieved and half annoyed - he’d been expecting the copper rod to just keep going down into some cave system he didn’t know existed, but it looked like it didn’t go any deeper than his basement. Still, he’d have to come back and follow up later.

Right now, some pony was knocking on his door. “C’mon, Nikki,” Lapis said, heading for the ladder.

“Lyra?” Lapis asked, opening up his front door. “What’re you doing here- oomf!”

“Quiet down!” Lyra hissed, having tackled Lapis to the ground. “She might hear you! I saw she was headed this way - did you see her?”

“See who…” Lapis began, and then it registered. “Oh, wait. You mean the zebra?”

Lyra’s ears folded back. She stood upright, stepping off of Lapis and glancing around as if the cloaked stranger might be somewhere in the room - then she nodded.

“Yeah, I saw the zebra,” Lapis said, getting to his hooves. “I waved at her…”

Lyra’s eyes widened, her ears tucking back.

“…She waved back,” Lapis continued. “And then nothing else happened. What’re you panicking about?”

“Um, well…” Lyra started. “Her! The zebra…” Lyra glanced around again, then lowered her voice. “Zecora! She’s weird, and she has stripes painted on her fur, and her eyes glow! She’s gotta be up to no good!”

Lapis raised a hoof to count off his counter-arguments, then remembered he no longer had fingers to count them off with. “How so, zebras are born with stripes, and… well, yeah, but she can turn that on and off, and she’s got perfectly normal eyes underneath. No Nightmare-Moon slit-pupils or anything.”

“…Okay, but both of those things are weird, and besides, she lives in the Everfree Forest!” Lyra protested, then she yelped as Lapis’ front door opened again.

“See, Lyra?” Bon Bon said, shooting her friend an annoyed look as she stepped into Lapis’ shop. “Zecora didn’t curse him, or do anything else. He’s fine.” Bon Bon turned to Lapis. “Afternoon.”

“Afternoon,” Lapis replied. “Lyra drag you over here?”

“Not intentionally,” Bon Bon replied. “Listen, Lyra. Zebras are just as much ponies as we are, they’re just from a different part of the world. That zebra might look a little strange even for a zebra, but if she is what I think she is, that just makes her a shaman.”

“Oh,” Lapis said. “Well, that explains the glowing eyes.”

“Exactly,” Bon Bon replied.

“W-wait, what’s a shaman?” Lyra asked, her eyes widening as her ears flopped back on her head.

Bon Bon huffed. “Lyra, shamans aren’t something to be scared about. A shaman is somepony who learns to use magic in ways that don’t need a horn. Most of them are zebras, some of them are diplomats, and all of them are experts with herbal remedies, medicines, and even magic potions. And even then, the potions are more like a side job - she’s more likely to come into town looking for tea herbs than for brewing ingredients.”

“Okay,” Lyra said, but she still looked worried. “But… why live in the Everfree, then?”

“I’m… not sure, but I’d bet she has good reason,” Bon Bon replied.

Lapis jumped in. “The Everfree’s got a lot of weird plants in it, right? Maybe that includes a lot of special herbs.”

“…Hey, yeah!” Lyra said, her ears perking up. “Didn’t Granny Smith say she found the first Zap-Apples in the Everfree?”

“You know, I think she did,” Bon Bon replied. “Anyway, Lapis, how’ve you been?”

“Oh. Uh, pretty decent, actually,” Lapis replied. “I had it rough a couple of days ago - first I slipped and bruised my hip, then I caught a cold, but both of those have just about sorted themselves out. Oh, and I managed to get my hooves on a copy of Magic 4 Dummies, so next time we end up stuck in a dark alley, you’ll only need to grab a lantern for yourself. How about you?”

“Whoa, wait, you learned the Hornlight spell?” Lyra asked. “C’mon, you can’t just say that and not show us!”

“Alright, hang on,” Lapis said, rolling his eyes and grinning, then he shut his eyes and quickly thought through the incantation. The strange weight-and-tug sensation came again, and a moment later, a glowing coat of Lapis’ brown-tinted magic wrapped around his horn. Lapis maintained the spell for a second or two, then dropped it. “It’s not super-bright, but it works - I used it to check out my attic a little earlier.”

“Not bad,” Bon Bon said, nodding. “It probably only seems dim because of the color - you know, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a unicorn with brown magic before. Does it run in your family?”

“…Well, I can’t say for sure, but I know brown eyes do,” Lapis replied. “Maybe it’s related. But anyway, how have the two of you been?”

“Well, I’ve managed to land a concert inside the Town Hall, so I’ve been practicing a lot for that,” Lyra said. “And Bon Bon has been-”

“Trying to work out a good recipe for lemon meringue cookies,” Bon Bon finished, shooting Lyra a smirk. “I think I managed to work one out, but we’ll have to see how they sell. …Hey, Lyra, you think I could pass out a plate or two at the concert, see how well they go over?”

“Ooh! That’d be perfect!” Lyra replied, clapping her hooves together. “We’ll need to talk to the organizer, but I can’t think of a reason they’d say no!”

“Well, I’d bring a second dessert option too, in case some pony is allergic to lemons or something,” Lapis said. “Still, when’s the concert happening?”

“It’s four days from today,” Lyra replied. “The Mayor wanted to try having a music festival, so she’s hosting a scaled-down version first. All the musician-ponies in town will be taking a turn to perform, starting at noon. I’ve got the three-thirty slot, which is two songs before the end… hey, you wanna come hear us play?”

“I think I might, yeah,” Lapis said, nodding. “Noon to… let’s say, four-ish? I’ll have to see what my workload looks like that day, but if it’s clear, then sure!”

“Great!” Bon Bon said, grinning. “It’s nice to see you’re finally settling in a little.”

“Whoa, what do you mean?” Lapis asked, cocking an eyebrow. “Bon Bon, I’ve been living here for almost a month now.” …Wait, I have?

Oh. Wow. That went fast.

“Yeah, and during that time, we’ve hardly ever seen you sitting down for longer than a meal,” Bon Bon replied, Lyra nodding from beside her. “You’re almost always either working, hiding from Pinkie, or in here getting some sleep, and ponies need more than a job and rest to be happy. It’s good that you’re getting out a little.”

“…Well, I guess I can’t really stay cooped up forever,” Lapis muttered. …I kinda haven’t been having a life, have I?

No, I haven’t. My life is on Earth. Equestria isn’t my life, it’s just where I’m living.

A sudden, trilling coo came out of the closet, and all three of the ponies in Lapis’ living room looked over.

“And speaking of cooped up,” Lapis said, quickly levitating the closet door open. Nikki flew out, landed atop Lapis’ head just long enough to cuff him in the ear with a wing, then took off again and settled atop one of the lantern hooks.

Lyra giggled, and Lapis grinned. “Yeah, she was helping me look over some stuff in my attic when Lyra showed up. I guess I kinda got distracted. Sorry, Nikki.”

Nikki glared at him.

“What’s up there, anyway?” Bon Bon asked. “This house have a charging array, or something?”

“A what-now?” Lapis asked, then it clicked. “Oh, you mean like a bundle of magic machines or something?”

“Exactly!” Lyra said. “Pulls spare magic out of the air, uses it to heat your stove, keep the lights on, cool your house, that stuff.”

“Oh, so that’s what it connects to,” Lapis muttered. “Yeah, I didn’t realize I had one until about fifteen minutes ago, and I’ve kinda been up there trying to figure it all out for a while.”

“Wait, you actually have one?” Bon Bon asked, her eyebrows rising. “I thought they were… well, not for private use.”

“I guess it came with the house,” Lapis said. “Why aren’t they cheap? It’s just copper, iron, and aluminum, right?”

Lyra and Bon Bon exchanged a look, then Bon Bon chuckled, and Lyra giggled again.

“What is it?”

“Lapis,” Bon Bon said. “Wherever you grew up, was copper easy to get your hooves on?”

“Well, I wouldn’t say ‘easy,’ but it sure wasn’t hard,” Lapis replied, cocking an eyebrow.

“Yeah. Well, here in Ponyville, the nearest source of copper is a three-day trot to the south,” Bon Bon said. “It’s this little mining town called Amberhoof, right on the edge of the Badlands.”

“Normally, charging arrays are a one-to-a-town thing,” Lyra added. “Most ponies’ houses have a big ol’ iron barrel-doohickey full of magic, that can be lugged back to the town charging station and hooked up to a faucet-thingamajig whenever it runs out of juice.”

“Not the words I would’ve used, but yes, that’s the short version. And that’s without even mentioning aluminum,” Bon Bon said. “Apparently the process of making the stuff is tricky business - last I heard, Equestria was getting most of its aluminum out of a trade deal with the Griffon Kingdoms.”

“Huh,” Lapis replied. Guess whatever pony built this house must’ve been a bit on the rich side, then… and between the giant window and the hidden basement, I guess this place does seem like the sort of building a rich eccentric would commission.

“Hey,” Lapis found himself asking, “just out of curiosity, do either of you know who lived in this house before I did? Or maybe who built it in the first place?”

Lyra cocked her head, considering. “About… half a dozen repair-ponies over the last ten years, I think. None of them really stayed for long, though. I guess the going got tough, so they got going.”

Bon Bon nodded. “And I’m not really sure who built this house, either… it’s been just the way it is now ever since I moved into Ponyville. I’d be willing to bet Town Hall’s got the original builder-ponies on record, though.”

“Huh. I guess I’ll have to check it out, the next time the Mayor gives me an official errand,” Lapis said.

Bon Bon blinked, cocking an eyebrow. “When was the last time?”

“Oh, she sent me up to take a look at the water tower after the whole giant star-bear thing,” Lapis said. “I ended up climbing down at about the same time the rain started, and I slipped on the last rung of the ladder. That's how I bruised my hip.”

Lyra winced. “Before the ground got muddy enough to be soft, even? Oof.”

“You didn’t notice anything… strange, while you were over there, did you?” Bon Bon asked, leaning forward. “Anything dangerous, or magical?”

Uh-oh. “Nothing more harmful than some potential splinters,” Lapis said, doing his best to look innocently confused. “Why, what happened?”

“Well, Derpy was talking with me the other day, and she said the cows heard some funny business going down by the water tower,” Bon Bon said, keeping her voice low. “A pair of unicorns got up to some shenanigans, and one of them got stuck on top of the tower without any magic. Derpy looked the place over, but she didn’t find any stuck ponies - just some muddy hoofprints. Probably just some teenagers getting themselves into trouble, but still.”

“…Sounds like a good reason to put a cage around the bottom six feet of the ladder,” Lapis said. “And a lock. And maybe bolt it to the side of the tower, just in case.”

Bon Bon snorted. “Oh, I wish. From what the Mayor’s been saying, getting the smith-ponies to replace the water tower was already a big bite out of the town budget. Safety measures will have to be next quarter, I’ll bet.” She glanced at the door. “And speaking of big bites, I’d better start working on that extra dessert as a backup for the meringue cookies. I’m thinking… pecan bars?”

“Ooh, with brown sugar!” Lyra said, then she glanced nervously at the window. “Do you think she’s gone yet?”

“Long gone,” Bon Bon confirmed, rolling her eyes and starting for the door. “And even if she weren’t, she’s not somepony- uh, somezebra? - to be worried about. Anyway, it’s been nice chatting, Lapis.”

“Nice to see you too, both of you,” Lapis said, as Lyra followed Bon Bon out of the door. “See you at the concert!”

“See you there!” Lyra chimed, and then she shut the door behind herself.

Two days later, Lapis wrapped up all his jobs as quickly as possible, then headed straight for the Town Hall. It probably would’ve been smarter to wait until the Mayor gave him another reason to visit besides just looking up records, but Lapis was through with not knowing who’d put together the secret forge in his hidden basement. There’s already way too much I don’t know about my current situation - the least I can do is make sure I’m not sitting on top of some dark wizard’s former evil lair.

When Lapis reached Town Hall, he found the building practically deserted. Mayor Mare was sitting at a desk to one side, her brow furrowed in concentration as she scribbled away at some parchment in front of her. It was odd to see a sentient creature using their mouth to hold a quill - I mean, she doesn’t have a horn, so of course she’s gotta write somehow, but still.

The Mayor looked up as he approached, gently dropping her quill atop the parchment. “Good morning, Lapis! What can I do for you today?”

“Well, I was looking for the records about the house I’m living in,” Lapis said. “Who’s lived there, who built it, that sort of thing. …What’re you doing out here, anyway? Where’s the rest of the ponies who work here?”

Mayor Mare winced, sucking a breath through her teeth. “It’s refiling day today, so most of them are in the archives downstairs. I’m sorry, Lapis - it pains me to say it, but today’s about the worst day you could have picked to go looking for paperwork. You don’t need those records too urgently, do you?”

“Well, not urgently, no,” Lapis said, frowning. “It’s just… well, I’ve been finding some quirks in the way my house was built, and I wanted to find out which ponies were responsible, or why.”

Mayor Mare cocked her head, considering. “Well, my grandmare told me that house was built when she was still a filly, so I suppose it could just be a product of antique craftsmareship. Why, what sort of things have you been finding?”

Do I tell her about the charging array? Probably not - that might lead to her sending some ponies over, and then there’s a chance they’d find the workshop. “Nothing major, just a couple of… odd design priorities. Honestly, I’m in here out of curiosity more than actual worry, it’s no trouble at all to come back some other time.”

“Ah. Well, whenever you do drop in, try not to do it the day after tomorrow,” Mayor Mare replied. “That’ll be another busy one, I’m afraid.”

“I heard. The concert thing, right?”

Mayor Mare blinked, then smiled. “Yes, that’s right! Did somepony already tell you?”

“Lyra did. Invited me, too - I haven’t made sure my schedule’s clear yet, but I think I can make it work,” Lapis said.

“Well, that was very nice of Ms. Heartstrings,” Mayor Mare replied. “Of course, you didn’t need her invitation to attend, but it’s good to hear you’re settling in.”

There’s those words again. ‘Settling in.’ Lapis wasn’t sure how he really felt about them, but he put on his best smile and turned for the door. “Well, you know what they say about all work and no play, Ms. May- uh, Mare. Guess I’ll be seeing you in two days, then!”

“I’ll see you then!” Mayor Mare called back. “Assuming I can finish signing all these before then, anyway,” Lapis heard her mutter, in the moment before the door closed behind him.

As soon as Lapis was ten steps out from the door to the town hall, he heaved an irritated sigh, then made a beeline back toward his workshop. Alright, forget checking the records, I’m going to do some more digging myself. There’s gotta be some clues that the builders left behind. Besides, who knows? Maybe I’ll learn a thing or two about carpentry-

“…anypony who wears brown rain-cloaks, like this one?”

“…Hmm… Nope!”

Pinkie. Lapis stepped into an alleyway, then took a few deep breaths. Alright. Guess it’s time to try out that invisibility spell. Here goes…

Lapis shut his eyes, focused, and reached out with his will. And the incantation was… wait, shit, what was the incantation?!

“Nopony? Nopony in Ponyville, at all?” Twilight’s voice asked, from closer by this time. Lapis’ panic immediately doubled.

“Nopey-dopey-lopey!” Pinkie said. “Ooh! My sister, Maud Pie, used to wear one like it, though! It was a brown one, like a really light pale-geode grayish-reddish-brownish, but she took it rock farming so often that it eventually got all dark and dusty-browny-brown. It had a hood too, but she never used it, she said she didn’t like the way it tugged on her ears when she smiled. But she doesn’t wear it anymore, and she definitely doesn’t live in Ponyville, either, so it can’t be hers.”

“Oh.” Twilight sounded disappointed, and for a second Lapis relaxed. “Well, thanks anyway, Pinkie.” Incantation, focus, c’mon… “Let light around me pass me by, no eardrum feel my breath or sigh…” then what?!

“…Listen, this is going to sound strange,” Twilight said, “but I need your help looking for somepony. I owe them an apology, but I don’t know how to find them.”

“Ooh! I was actually thinking about asking you for the same thing!” Pinkie replied, and Lapis felt his blood freeze. “There’s been this new pony in town, just for a little longer than you have, but I’ve only ever seen him for a second or two at once. He’s really fast, and super-duper sneaky!”

“Really fast, huh…?” Twilight muttered. “What did he look like?”

“Hmm… I think he was a unicorn, but I’m not sure. He might be an Earth-pony, but I’ve never seen him flying, so if he’s a pegasus, he’s a super-duper-looper sneaky pegasus.” Pinkie gasped. “What if he’s a ninja pegasus?!”

Oh, I wish. Incantation, come on, two more lines…

“…The pony I was looking for definitely wasn’t a ninja,” Twilight said. “And he wasn’t a pegasus, either. He was a unicorn, but I didn’t see much of what he looked like - it was back during that big rainstorm, so he got covered in mud before I even saw him.”

“Hmm…” Pinkie mused. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen this pony covered in mud. When he’s galloping, he almost just looks like one big baby-bluey blur, but if he holds still he’s got a sort of whitey-yellowy coat, with a blueberry-colored mane!” Pinkie paused. “Mmm… blueberries. Hey, if I made two dozen blueberry muffins, would you help me eat them?”

…Got the incantation! Lapis thought, a thrill of triumph running through him as the last two lines fell into place. 'Let light around me pass me by, no eardrum feel my breath or sigh, no pony view my bags or face, and my steps pass without a trace!'

The effect was immediate - the same tug-and-weight sensation as before rocked Lapis, but much stronger, like more of a yank-and-crush. He felt his knees go wobbly at once, and it took him a second to steady them - but, when he looked down, he couldn’t see his own hooves, or even his saddlebags. It worked… it worked! Perfect!

Slowly, carefully, Lapis stepped toward the exit of the alley, and glanced around to see where Pinkie and Twilight were. It looked like he’d gotten his spell off in just the nick of time - the two ponies were all set to pass right by the alley where he’d been taking refuge. Twilight, Lapis saw, had the rain-cloak he’d bought earlier slung over her back, now washed and free of mud, while Pinkie was bouncing along as carefree as ever.

“…Maybe not a whole two dozen,” Twilight was saying, smirking. “Blue mane, white coat… that almost sounds like my brother, Shining Armor, but I don’t think he’s ever been fast enough to blur. Not unless he’s gone through a lot more training, anyway.”

Brother? Lapis thought, carefully stepping around the two ponies as they passed him by. Oh, yeah, right. He was in the wedding episode, with the succubus-bug things. Good thing that happens in Canterlot; with any luck, I won’t be- nope, don’t think that, you’ll jinx it. He took three careful, quiet steps down the street…

There was a brief wobbling noise, something like a laminate sheet being shaken, and then the sound of Pinkie’s bouncing hooves began to slow. Lapis paused, looking over his shoulder, and frowned - Pinkie had come to a stop, and was glancing around herself as if looking for something.

“…Pinkie?” Twilight asked. “What’s wrong?”

“Huh? Oh, nothing’s wrong, Twilight! I just feel like I walked past somepony, and I’m trying to figure out where they are,” Pinkie said, continuing to look around, slowly turning toward where Lapis stood, invisible. “Huh. I think they’re…”

Oh, you're kidding me, Lapis thought, his eyes widening. That’s just not…

…Hang on.

Lapis reached into his invisible saddlebags, grabbing the flat, rounded object he knew was his mask, and quickly slid it onto his face. For a second, nothing changed - Pinkie kept staring at the spot where he was standing. She blinked, pulling her head slightly backward, then she smiled. “Oh. Whoopsie!”

Then, to his relief, she turned back around, and started trotting ahead of Twilight, who was cocking an eyebrow at her friend. “What was that about?” Twilight asked.

“Nothing to worry about, Twilight!” Pinkie chimed. “Just an invisible barrel! C’mon, there’s blueberry muffins to bake!”

Seriously? You’re serious about this? Even through invisibility?! That’s… what?!

You know what? Fine. Sure. Why not.

“…I do not get you, Pinkie Pie,” Twilight sighed, but she trotted on after her, away from Lapis.

Lapis waited until the pair of ponies were out of sight, then pulled off the mask and dismissed his invisibility spell. At once, he stumbled as his leg jittered, and he blinked as his vision briefly blurred. Whoa. Guess invisibility’s got more of a bite to it, huh?

He shook his head clear, then started back toward his shop, but found to his annoyance that his knees still trembled a little with every step. More than that, he was feeling almost out of breath, like he’d just finished a long run. …Exactly the same as a long run, minus the sweat… oh, wait, there it is. Wow. Okay.

Magic’s no joke, huh?

By the time Lapis got back to his shop, he was all he could do to stop himself from huffing and puffing. Again, he headed straight to the shower, which only helped his fatigue a little - it cleared a little of the fog from his head, and gave him a chance to catch his breath, but his knees were still shaky as he ascended the attic ladder with a lantern, and maybe a little shakier as he descended into the basement sans-lantern.

Settling in, Lapis thought, as he started systematically removing the lanterns from the basement. Am I settling in? I mean, sure, I’m learning a lot more about Equestria than I thought I would, but does that really count? Or am I just keeping informed about my situation?

…I guess I can’t really count ‘going to a concert’ as something done for educational purposes, though. Now that Lapis thought about it, going to Lyra’s concert in three days would be a personal milestone: it would be the very first time, in Equestria at least, that he’d be doing something bigger than a breakfast for his own leisure.

I guess I could think of it as just helping to build myself a safety net. Making some connections, so that I can draw on them in case something goes wrong… no, this isn’t just a networking thing. Lapis sighed, pulling the last lantern in the basement off its hook on the wall and staring into the light behind its amber-hued glass. They saved my life. We threw a monster out a window together. We’re friends.

Bon Bon and Lyra… they’ll miss me, when I leave.

And I think I’ll miss them, too.

“Dammit,” Lapis muttered, the start of a throbbing headache beginning to pulse between his temples as he took the lantern up into the closet. “Son of a bitch.”

When Lapis got down into the basement, he was both annoyed and relieved to see exactly what he’d been hoping to see: a few slivers of light poking through the floorboards of his workshop, leading from the center of one wall all the way to the forge at the center of the room.

What Lapis had done earlier, when he went up into the attic, was to take one of the lanterns and lower it down into the pit with the copper rod. And now that he’d taken all the other lanterns out of the basement, he could see - at least in part - where the space for that copper rod was. From that, he could guess where the spare mana collected by the charging array was going, and then he’d be able to sleep in peace, knowing that his home wasn’t secretly a disguise slapped together atop some ancient doomsday machine.

The relief was at the fact that his idea had worked. Lapis was still annoyed, however, because now he had to take a crowbar and pull up his floorboards. He levitated the crowbar off the rack in his closet, then set to work.

I’m getting way too used to being a unicorn, he thought, as he pulled up the first nail. I wonder how long it’ll take me to get used to being a human again, once I get back? I’ll probably end up getting annoyed that my morning cup of coffee isn’t just floating next to my head on its own every morning. …No, worse than that, I won’t be able to fix stuff with magic anymore. I’ll just end up holding everything together with duct-tape again. And the longer I stay here, the longer it’s going to take for me to adjust…

…And the more reasons Lyra, Bon Bon, and I will end up having to miss each other, Lapis finished, carefully lifting the first board out of the floor. But I don’t even know where to start looking for a way back - wait, are those… what?!

Lapis’ jaw dropped, and the board clattered to the floor at his side, forgotten. Through the gap where it had been, there was a concrete-lined trench, the sort of opening that Lapis would’ve called a crawl space if not for the fact that it was big enough for him to stand in. The copper rod was there, making a beeline from the pit in the attic directly to the bottom of the forge, multiple offshoots disappearing into the gray concrete to either side of the pit - but below that…

Slowly, gingerly, Lapis levitated one of the glinting, boxy objects off the first of the four stacks tucked beneath the conducting rod. As it entered the light, any doubt Lapis had vanished - stamped into the surface of the gleaming orange ingot were the words 92% COPPER - 20 LBS - AMBERHOOF, the outlines of the letters glimmering just enough to read in the faint lamplight.

Not long after, Lapis had another ingot from each of the other three stacks on the floor beside him. Stack number two was also copper ingots, but stacks three and four were iron and aluminum respectively - the former stamped with the logo of some forge in Baltimare, and the latter simply labeled Pure Griffon Aluminum. Each stack had at least a dozen or two ingots, and even the aluminum ingot had been heavy enough to dent the wooden floorboards when Lapis dropped it - though, the aluminum was soft enough to be dented by the impact as much as the floor had. Even more unsettling, however, was the fifth pile tucked away just beneath the forge: a decent-sized, glittering stack of scratched, clear gemstones, in every color of the rainbow and then some. It was, in short, everything a prospecting artificier needed to practice their craft, and Lapis couldn’t have been more aggravated to find it.

Between the headache, re-filing day, Pinkie’s apparent ability to see through magic, and now this latest mystery, Lapis suddenly couldn’t take it any more. He sat back on his rump with a thump, his lips moving soundlessly as he tried, and failed, to process the events of the day.

“Who lived here?!” he eventually muttered, staring down at the ingots in disbelief. “How much money did they have? Why be a repair-pony at all, if you could afford all this?! Why hide it under the floor?! I just… I… what?!”

Lapis groaned, then rubbed his forehead with a hoof. Damn, this headache sucks… alright. Deep breaths. Freaking out isn’t going to help with anything. Yes, there’s weird stuff in my basement, but at least it’s not a doomsday machine. What does all this spare metal mean for me?

I need to get back home. That’s the goal. Before, I thought magic was going to be the biggest thing to help me out, but right now… Lapis’ horn stung as his head gave a particularly nasty throb, and he winced. …Right now, if this is what’s going to happen every time I turn invisible for a few seconds, then magic’s looking like a big fat no.

Lapis sighed, then looked down at the mysterious piles of spare metal. I hadn’t thought artifice was an option, just because I didn’t think I had the spare parts… but now, it just might be. Assuming I can figure out how to work metal without setting myself on fire, anyway.

Lapis levitated the manual on artifice up from his workbench, and after a moment’s hesitation, flipped through to one of the first designs that had seriously caught his interest. It was the first design mentioned in the book, and was described as one of the easier mechanisms to make: a fixed-rate mana siphon. In concept, it wasn’t much different from the collector array on Lapis’ roof - it extracted magic from a source, and funneled it into a copper rod so that it could be put to use. The difference, though, was the source: the roof was designed not to take magic from ponies, while the mana siphon had been built to draw off the reserves of anything that touched the runed iron rod at its center, even if it was a unicorn grabbing it via telekinesis.

Gotta figure out how to do this somehow, Lapis thought, picking up the iron ingot in a magical field and advancing toward the forge. Here goes nothing.

Some people got headaches when they thought too hard. Others got headaches when they worked too hard, or when they did either for too long.

Lapis had gotten headaches in all those ways and then some, but sometimes it was just the opposite - most days, the most surefire way to get himself a headache was to sit around doing nothing for a while. As soon as he got busy, though, either planning some project or carrying it out, it was like his brain… relaxed, somehow. As if it had been cramping up, and the effort was forcing it to stretch back into working condition.

Lapis hadn’t been expecting working at a forge for the first time to get rid of his headache. He’d thought the heat of the coals, combined with the deafening, repeated clang of hammer striking hot iron on an anvil, would work to give him the worst headache he’d ever had. And to be fair, the noise had sucked, until Lapis thought to take a spare towel from his closet and wrap it around his head like a turban (sometimes, it wasn’t the worst thing in the world to have ears on top of his head instead of on the side).

The heat, though, he’d found he could almost shrug off, as long as he stayed hydrated. And the hammer was still loud even through the blanket, but watching the iron, copper and aluminum deform under every strike, watching the molten-metal putty shape itself into something that looked more and more like the parts of an actual machine, made it worth all the racket.

It had been slow going - multiple times, a clumsy blow had caused a piece to split in two, but Lapis’ apparent proficiency for Mend-All spells meant that was only a momentary inconvenience. It was a lucky thing he could pick up glowing hot metal via magic without feeling any of the heat - still, his telekinetic grip wasn’t strong enough to actually mold anything but the aluminum with, so he stuck with using the hammer most of the time. (He did, however, spend several unnecessary minutes molding and squeezing the ball of hot aluminum with his magic, not even with a purpose in mind - it was almost like playing with Play-Doh, except you had to stand two feet away from the play-surface at all times or risk setting yourself on fire.)

When Lapis was finally done, the result was a simple rod encased in aluminum, with a lumpy copper cap at one end and a nub of black iron on the other. Lapis levitated it before his eyes, careful not to telekinetically grasp the iron portion as he looked it over.

The lumps on the copper cap were the product of his own clumsy craftsmanship - the aluminum had been soft enough that he’d been able to smooth out the bumps, but the copper held no such tolerance for fine-tuning, let alone the iron. Still, it was done. Lapis had learned how to use the first few bits of equipment in this forge, and now, he had something to show for it.

The first thing Lapis did was flip to the next page in the book, re-reading the instructions there. Whatever pony had written it, they’d clearly meant it as something more like a lab manual than a textbook - they’d said that, to get any use out of the device, it was best to affix a gemstone onto the copper rod before grasping the iron portion of the siphon; however, they’d left it up to the reader to find out what each different type of gemstone did, advising only that he “save quartz for last.” So, Lapis selected one gem of every color of the rainbow - plus a clear diamond, and a significantly less-clear quartz crystal - and set them atop the workbench. He also grabbed a pencil and opened the empty notebook on the workbench to the first page, ready to write down the results of each gemstone.

One at a time, he touched the rod to each gemstone, then grabbed onto the iron portion of the siphon. The first thing he noticed was that he could feel his magical reservoir being depleted, unlike with most telekinesis - it was the same tugging sensation that happened when he cast the Hornlight spell and invisibility, but much less potent.

The ruby was the first gem he funneled some mana into, and it started to faintly glow as he grasped the iron nub of the siphon. At first, nothing seemed to happen - then the wood underneath the gem began smoking. One frantic bout of slapping the workbench with his towel later, Lapis picked up the pencil and wrote, Ruby: Heat.

Next was a small, round drop of amber. It was the only one that Lapis had found in the pile, so he guessed that orange gems were tough to come by. He waited for several seconds, and the amber glowed like it was doing something with the magic he was feeding it, but eventually Lapis ended up pulling the siphon away. Amber: ???

Next was a topaz gem. When Lapis initially touched the siphon to the gem, he felt the drain again, and the glow of magic built up much more quickly than with the other gems. Then, suddenly, the light flared, and Lapis yelped in surprise as he shielded his eyes with a hoof, withdrawing the siphon at once. It took three seconds for the afterimage to fade from his eyes, and two more before the gem stopped glowing. Topaz: light.

Then came an emerald. Still paranoid thanks to the topaz’ effects, Lapis stood well away from his workbench as he touched the siphon to the gem. It turned out, he needn’t have worried - the emerald drained a lot of his magic as it lit up, but seemed to do little else besides glow. Emerald: ???

The sapphire didn’t seem to do much at first, until Lapis looked closer and saw tiny drops of water collecting on its surface. Sapphire: makes water? Condenses it? Unclear.

The amethyst lit up a deeper hue of purple than he’d expected, and caused a drop of water that had fallen from the sapphire to roll back across the workbench - then, somehow, fall up onto a facet of the amethyst, where it spread into a sheet. After sprinkling a pinch of coal dust in the vicinity of the crystal, then watching as it was slowly pulled onto the amethyst’s surface, Lapis sighed. “Okay. That’s probably horrifying if I do the math, but whatever.” Amethyst: Gravity.

The diamond seemed, at least initially, to do nothing, draining almost no magic from Lapis’ reserves as it emitted a faint, starlight-like glow. Then, the edges of the room began to blur, and Lapis grew dizzy enough that he dropped the siphon - and all at once, everything snapped back to normal. Diamond: acid trip? Brain magic?

Last was the quartz crystal. It was easily the largest of the crystals from the pile, and between that and the textbook’s warning, Lapis couldn’t help but feel apprehensive as he lowered the copper cap of the siphon onto its cloudy-white bulk. After a second or two, the quartz crystal lit up - but not in the same way as the other gems. Instead of glowing from within, it became wrapped in a coat of brown magic, as if Lapis were telekinetically grabbing it.

Then, as Lapis felt the quartz continue to pull on his magic, the glow around the crystal grew brighter, more vivid, transitioning from the familiar chocolate hue of his own magic to a warm, creamy yellow, bright and gentle as candlelight. The glow grew around the quartz as the rock slowly levitated off the workbench, Lapis blinking in surprise as the glowing stuff pushed against the mana siphon with considerable force, shifting and churning as it washed out from the crystal’s facets, waving in slow, lazy ribbons…

“It’s beautiful,” Lapis muttered. “Like Aurora Borealis…” And like the princess’ mane. Is this raw magic? Slowly, carefully, he reached out to touch it with a hoof, but found that it pushed back against his weight - the closest he could get to touching the quartz was about an inch, before the force of the magic’s flow pushed his hooves away.

Not just raw magic, he realized, as he felt himself slowly growing fatigued. This is my raw magic. He relinquished his grip on the mana siphon, and sure enough, the glow of the quartz crystal faded back to his own brown before disappearing entirely, the crystal settling atop the workbench with a gentle, solid thunk.

Lapis heaved a slow, satisfied sigh, a faint smile spreading across his face. That was me… I did that. All of it - the siphon, the smithing, the magic, everything. Speaking of magic… didn’t that reference guide to the Elements of Harmony say something about magical foci?

Lapis’ eyes widened as the page suddenly came to mind, the words returning to his mind with a jolt that felt like lighting. “…What other uses,” he muttered, “besides the protection of Equestria, such a powerful set of magical foci as the Elements could provide. If their use could send a mare to the moon… that’s it!”

It was a long shot for sure, but if quartz crystals took magic and spat them out raw, the first thing he could think of to try was to see what happened if he focused a bunch of magic into one place. If that’s what the Elements did, then maybe the same thing could be done mechanically!

Lapis grinned. It’s crazy. It’ll never work. But it’s a start. He thought for a second, then raised the pencil to the paper.

Quartz: he wrote. Raw magic, kinetic force…

He paused briefly, then snorted, rolling his eyes. "...I guess it's not wrong."

Lowering the pencil to paper again, he wrote, Hope.

Author's Note

Patch Notes:

Perspective changes were not clearly indicated. This has been fixed, via implementation of horizontal rules (Joyeuse)

Hey, welcome back! This one felt a bit dry to write, mostly because I kept trying to stick bits of next chapter into it, and I had to keep reminding myself not to. Let me ask you this: have you ever wondered what happens when half of a town gets eaten by magic bugs? Because you’d better believe I have. Let’s stick with stuff from this chapter just now, though.

Horse sweat does, in fact, work into a foam. This isn’t just because of friction, though - horse sweat differs from human sweat in that it contains a compound called latherin, which does exactly what its name implies. Lapis doesn’t know that, though, so I didn’t work it into his thoughts on being a pony. On a similar note - yes, I know what Lauren Faust said regarding how ponies use the bathroom. While I respect her authority as a lead creator of the show, I can’t help noticing that her explanation doesn’t quite fit with the general lack of gardens in, say, Manehattan. Between that, the fact that I’ve yet to find a section of the show that conforms with her explanation (i.e., shows piles of poop just sitting on the roads), and the fact that Pinkie Pie is shown to have at least some distaste over the prospect of changing diapers when she foalsits Pound and Pumpkin Cake, I decided to officially deviate from canon as follows: in my story, ponies in general are not as laissez-faire about personal hygiene, and as such have invented plumbing, toilets, and toilet paper. (And yes, ponies without horns still use TP - if you care about how it works beyond the fact that it gets done, I invite you to come up with your own theories, as the best two I’ve got right now are “they can reach back there with their front hooves via cartoon physics,” or “like dental floss.”)

Moving on, you may have noticed by now that Nikki is pretty quick to smack Lapis upside the ears or face whenever he causes her or himself trouble. This is because real pigeons really will slap you, and I think that’s funny.

Maybe I should explain. Pigeons, like dogs, are social animals. Part of being a social animal is the need to communicate displeasure to other animals of your species, like how dogs will whine and growl. However, pigeons are quieter than dogs (probably about having a slightly longer life expectancy if they don’t attract attention, but I’m not a pigeon expert so I don’t know). There’s a problem, though: they still need a way to tell other pigeons that they would like some space, without bringing the attention of any passing hawks.
Pigeons have found a very simple solution to this problem. A sufficiently irritated pigeon, upon finding their need for space unmet, will turn to one side and raise their wings over their body without fully unfolding them. This gesture serves both as a warning and as preparation for the next step: pow
Still trying to decide whether Lapis will eventually get wing-slapped by a pegasus - they’ve got a lot more weight to move than a pigeon does, even with magic, so their wings would be much stronger and the force would be much greater. A casual oh-stop-it swat, if carelessly delivered, could sting for as long as 45 minutes - and a serious blow from a strong flier might knock the recipient straight to the ground, leaving them bruised and twinging for a week! Might have to save that one for a future Nightmare Night chapter.

Alrighty, that’s all for now. Props for reading through this dryest of chapters, and I’ll see you in the next one!

7 Minus 1: ...Is Learning Too Little

Yesterday afternoon, Lapis Print had discovered four piles of metal ingots in his basement, and shaped those metal ingots into a mana siphon. This evening, he was taking that mana siphon, a second he’d constructed not long after testing the effects of different gems, and two more he’d cobbled together earlier in the day, and finding out what happened when a whole bunch of magic was all pushed into one place at once.

The mana siphons were the key ingredients for this experiment. Lapis had jerry-rigged a simple frame out of spare lumber and wood screws, shaped into a rough tetrahedron - a three-sided pyramid, with the iron nub of a pump protruding from each corner. I’d prefer to have a cube, honestly, but for now I’ll make do with what I’ve got.

Carefully, Lapis moved the pyramid to the center of the workshop, then retreated partway up the stairs, levitating his notebook and a pencil along with him. Flipping to the first blank page, he wrote:

Entry One
- Objective: Observe the effects of mechanically concentrating magic. Description of the EoH as “magical foci” noted that they were capable of sending living creatures to the moon - focusing magic via less artifact-y means might be equally helpful for transportation.
- Hypothesis: No clear prediction for results. However, the desired effect of portal generation will likely not be achieved, because even in Equestria, nothing is ever that easy. Additionally, the mana may leak free of the current frame via the uncovered faces, along the same pathway as the air.
- Method: Four mana siphons with mounted-on quartz crystals placed at the vertices of a rough tetrahedron will drain magic from the researcher’s reservoir and release it into the center of the tetrahedron, concentrating it into a central point while allowing air to disperse.
- Results:

“…Time to get some,” Lapis muttered. Taking a deep breath, he turned to face the pyramid, then telekinetically grasped the mana siphons.

At once, he felt the familiar tugging sensation of his magical reserves being drained, and a few seconds later, the mana siphons flared to life, Lapis’ own magic pouring from the four quartz crystals as a shifting, candlelight-colored glow.

Lapis watched intently as the magic collected in the center of the pyramid, blinking away his faint, growing fatigue as the magic coalesced into a luminous orb. Okay. So far, so good. Looks like magic might prefer to concentrate itself, if it’s really not going to just leak out the open sides-

A slow, ominous creak echoed through the basement, punctuated by an ominous crackling sound as a dark, jagged line appeared on one of the wooden legs of the frame. Uh-oh.

Lapis released his telekinetic grip on the siphons at once, backing further up the stairs. A split second later, there was a crack like a gunshot, and a foot-long shard of wood spun through the space that Lapis had been occupying moments before. It shattered on impact with the stone wall of the basement, Lapis shutting his eyes and turning his head just before his face was showered with splinters.

After five seconds, when nothing exploded, caught fire, or made funny noises, Lapis opened his eyes and crept back into the basement, keeping alert for the slightest sign of any further accidents. The mana siphon at the top of the pyramid seemed to have burst free of its confines, shattering the wood of the tetrahedron in its brief, high-speed quest to touch the ceiling - however, now that Lapis wasn’t feeding it his magic, it was slowly sinking back to the floor, the light that had propelled it fading away as it dropped onto the pile of wood scraps that once had been a frame.

Lapis approached the pile, and levitated up the largest pieces he could find. To his surprise, it wasn’t just the bits of wood attached to the top siphon that had broken - all of them were bowed, their outsides splitting to let their insides arch, as if they’d been sat on by a giant…

“Or,” Lapis muttered, “subjected to high pressure.” He pulled over his notebook, and began to write again:

- Results: Immediately following siphon activation, the magic expelled by the siphons began to gather into a sphere at the frame’s center. However, approximately fifteen seconds post-activation, the framework developed a large fracture on one wooden beam. The researcher attributes this phenomenon to conflicting thrust produced by the siphons.
Almost immediately following the development of the fracture, the concentration device underwent rapid unplanned disassembly. While standardized terminology has yet to be discovered, this researcher believes the cause to be something akin to a pressure buildup.
- Discussion: No portals were generated during the testing process; however, the initial centralization of the mana expelled by the pumps may suggest a natural tendency of mana to gravitate toward itself. Additionally, the mana siphons may yet show promise for the purposes of transportation, if their basic design is modified for thrust generation rather than magic focusing.

Lapis took a second to look around his workshop again. There was still a dusting of splinters on his face, and piles of fractured wood littered the edges of the room where the other legs had split. He certainly wasn’t going to try repairing the lumber, that would easily be a multiple-hour job - but sweeping it up wasn’t going to be fast, either. He’d have to be quick if he wanted to get to bed on time, and considering Lyra’s concert was the following day, getting his rest would be important.

Lapis sighed, then touched his pencil back to the page, already levitating a broom and dustpan down from the closet. ...Further research required.

He hadn’t really been expecting much else to come from his initial test. He’d been expecting failure, mentally braced even for spectacular failure. Or so Lapis had thought, anyway. He was proved wrong just after he was done sweeping up the splinters of the wooden frame, when he was presented with the task of dumping the wreckage of his first serious attempt at getting to Earth into his trash can. Lapis stared down at the rough pile of splinters and sawdust inside his dustpan, and felt a slow, creeping panic trying to claw its way up his throat.

He took a deep breath and shut his eyes, forcing his fear back down. It’s just trash. I’m not admitting defeat, I’m just cleaning up. I knew it was a long shot when I started, there’s no reason for me to get all worked up over it. And still the wooden shrapnel continued to hover above his trash can, the splinters remaining undumped.

It had been a long shot, alright. It was one of the longest long shots Lapis had ever had. But it was also the only real hope he’d had since he got dumped in Equestria, and it had almost literally blown up in his face. I knew it wasn’t going to work, but I tried it anyway, and it damn well could’ve killed me! Who knows what the hell else might happen, if I keep going like this? I’ve gotta be more careful, but if I take too long-

“I have to do better,” Lapis muttered, doing his best to ignore the quiet scratching sounds of the splinters shifting in the dustpan. “I have to get this under control.” He took another deep breath, then opened his eyes.

…Had the splinters always been that neatly-piled in the dustpan? They certainly were now, stacked into a tidy, almost deliberate-looking wedge, with the smallest fragments near the front of the dustpan and the largest at the back, near the handle. Lapis found his eyes drawn to one especially jagged-looking shard of torn wood, split almost into a Y by the magical pressure he’d subjected it to.

Carefully, so as not to further break the already-broken wood, Lapis levitated the large chunk of wood out of the dustpan, dumping the rest into the trash can. He carried the shard over to his workbench and laid it near the back, right in the middle, where he’d be able to see it. Maybe this way, I’ll remember to be more careful next time. Make myself something sturdy to duck behind, or something.

And hopefully, I’ll be better able to handle it when things go south. Lapis sighed, then headed upstairs for his bed, his knees suddenly jittery with fatigue. Maybe.

When Lapis emerged from his bedroom the following morning, he was surprised to see not one, but three pigeons sitting on the table by the window, having what sounded like a conversation made up entirely of trilling coos and chirps. All three of them looked up as Lapis passed the table, falling silent as if waiting for him to leave.

Lapis frowned, pausing to inspect the trio of birds. One of them was Nikki - her glare was pretty familiar by now - but the other two, he didn’t recognize.

“Friends of yours?” Lapis asked, glancing between Nikki and the other two pigeons.

Nikki shrugged, then made a so-so gesture with her wing. Lapis frowned. “O-kay then.” What is this, a gossip club? A meet-up? Does Ponyville have a pigeon mafia or something?
…Actually, you know what? Nikki’s been nice enough not to push too far into my business, so I’ll keep my nose out of hers.

“Tell you what, I’m headed to work,” Lapis said. “I won’t ask any questions about whatever you’re doing, just don’t make a mess, don’t involve Pinkie or her friends, and please try not to set anything on fire. Deal?”

Nikki and the other two pigeons awkwardly glanced at each other for a moment, then Nikki nodded.

“Good,” Lapis said, opening his front door and levitating the order slips off his request board as he slung his saddlebags onto his back. “See you when I get back.”

He left the building, glancing up and down the street before quickly shuffling through his list of orders. Lot of banners today, must be some kind of celebration going on… better get these done quick if I want to make Lyra’s concert this afternoon. Let’s see… a roof, as usual. A doorframe with some cracked trim, and… huh. A rabbit hutch? Who owns bunnies?

…Wait a minute.

Lapis frantically checked the order slip, and breathed a relieved sigh when he saw that Fluttershy’s name wasn’t on it. Okay, good. Honestly, now that I’m thinking about it, it’s kind of a miracle that none of the protagonists have put in a request with me yet. Where are these orders at, anyway?

He flicked through the order slips. The rabbit hutch was at some house on Cantering Boulevard, while the roof was on a nearby side street. Can probably knock the both of those out inside of an hour or two, especially if they’re both outside. Now, where’s that doorframe?

…Oh, come on!

Lapis paused in the middle of the road, staring down at the order slip as if he could force its address to change through sheer force of will alone. Unfortunately, the pencil lead scrawled across the bottom half of the slip didn’t change, the letters stubbornly continuing to spell out the words ‘Apple family home, Sweet Apple Acres.’

Welp. Sorry, Lyra, but it looks like I might be busy all day long. Lapis took a deep breath, set his jaw, and briefly checked over the contents of his saddlebags, making sure his mask was there as he mentally ran through the invisibility incantation. Not that he was expecting to use his mask, of course - he strongly doubted it would work on Applejack.

Still, this would only be his second time doing a repair job on protagonist property - and if fixing Pinkie’s table had taught him anything, it was that it paid to be prepared.

Lapis had been to apple orchards before. In Ohio, at least, apple farms were easier to visit than a lot of people expected - often, the same farmers that were crowd-tolerant enough to run pick-your-own-pumpkin patches would also have a sprawling orchard or two for picking your own apples. He had fond memories of walking up and down the neat rows of lush, shortish trees, watching his breath fog in the crisp autumn air as he looked over the more promising apples for any sign of bugs, then pulling the best selections free of their branch with a clean, satisfying pop before placing them in the basket in his free hand. Maybe it was because they were fresh off the tree, or maybe it had just been in his head - but somehow, apples had always tasted better when he’d picked them himself.

Sweet Apple Acres was like those orchards in that it had apple trees - short, as trees went, the bright, rough ovals of their foliage dotted with the shining red or paler-green shapes of apples. But that’s where the similarities ended. Instead of having neat, wide rows built for four-wheelers to ride down, the trees were scattered almost at random, showing no signs of organization besides the gaps or fences between different varieties of apple. In addition, instead of bugs being his primary company, Lapis found that the wildlife he could spot was mostly made up of chipmunks and various birds, with the occasional squirrel darting up or down one of the apple trees’ narrow trunks.

Although… it was odd, but the animals didn’t seem to be foraging. Lapis frowned as he watched one of the squirrels run right past three or four promising apples to a hole in the tree trunk, pull a good four acorns from its cheeks and stuff them in the hole, then squeeze itself inside and hurriedly yank a leaf over the entrance. It’s the wrong weather for that, but this almost looks like they’re getting ready for a storm. Maybe it’s just the wrong time of year for foraging or something? No, wait, squirrels just don’t eat apples - but then, why are they over here?

In any case, Lapis had bigger things to worry about than the wildlife. The Apple family house - a large building that looked for all the world like an oversized, complicated barn - was just visible over the top of a hill now, and Lapis wasted no time trying to come up with a plan of attack. Applejack wasn’t anywhere Lapis could see yet, which worried him - if he didn’t know where she was, that meant she could descend on him at any minute.

He paused, then warily looked around himself. Nope, nowhere around here. Besides, if she were working in these orchards, I’m pretty sure I’d hear her - she usually harvests the apples by kicking the trees real hard, if I remember right.

Lapis sighed, advancing up the hill toward the barn. So that means I’ve gotta get up there and peek through the windows to see if she’s there, and hope that she and the rest of her family don’t see me acting like a weirdo- There!

Lapis hastily ducked behind a tree as Applejack stepped out of one of the barn’s side doors. She took off her Stetson hat for just long enough to duck under the yoke of a decent-size, empty cart, then hastened down the hill at a right angle from Lapis’ approach, toward an extra-full cluster of apple trees. It was hard to tell from where he was, but Applejack’s face looked… confused? Annoyed?

Whatever’s going on, it’s going on away from me, Lapis thought. And if I’m fast enough, hopefully that’ll be all I need to worry about.

…Although, if I did have to make contact with a protagonist, it’d probably be Applejack, Lapis realized as he hurried up the hill. Based on what I’ve seen of her during the Summer Sun Celebration, she’s pretty well inclined to keep the wild cards of the group in check, so hopefully that’d extend to not making too much trouble for me, either. Plus, she ends up working up here most of the time, so I likely wouldn’t end up seeing much of her, either.
Still, it’s too much of a risk.

Lapis waited until he could see Applejack working on the cluster of apple trees before he gently knocked on the door to the Apple family home. A few moments later, the door slowly, creakily opened, revealing an elderly, pale-green mare squinting at him from behind it. “…Who is it?”

“Oh, good morning, Granny Smith,” Lapis said, recognizing the tight no-nonsense bun of the mare’s mane. “It’s the repair-pony. I hear there’s a doorframe that needed fixed?”

Granny Smith’s squint deepened. “Ah remember yeh. Yer the pony who fixed mah cookin’-pot, weren’t yeh?”

“That’d be me,” Lapis said. “Thanks again for helping make that oatmeal for the town, it was delicious.”

“Mm.” Granny Smith creaked back from the doorway, pulling the door open behind her. “Ah know which door yeh’re talkin’ about, but it wasn’ me who called yeh here. Lemme show yeh to yer job, then Ah’ll get Macintosh to come see to payin’ yeh.”

“Thanks a bunch,” Lapis said. …Does she not like me or something? I mean, yeah, I offended her about the oatmeal, but there’s no way she holds a grudge for that long, right?

It didn’t take too long of a walk before Granny Smith and Lapis reached the doorframe in question. Lapis spotted the problem at once - the trim-piece at the edge of the floor had warped away from the wall, likely thanks to humidity. He could see the painted-over tacks jutting from the underside of the board, and grimaced at the sight of the wood that the tacks had been embedded in - it was dark from moisture, and looked almost spongy to the touch. …Yeah, that’s bad news. Not sure how I’ll fix that one, but I’ve come all this way, so I may as well try.

“Ah told Macintosh to just git a new board and stick it on,” Granny Smith said, “but he was keen on lettin’ yeh try yer hooves first. Said somethin’ about not likin’ the look of the wood underneath.”

Lapis pulled a screwdriver from his saddlebags and gave the wood a firm poke, then winced at the droplet of moisture that rolled down the length of the tool. “Yeah, I’m sorry to say it, but I think he had good reason. Not sure why, but there’s a lot of moisture buildup in this wood - I’ll do my best to get that trim-piece back in, but if I were you, I don’t think I’d plan on living in this building much longer. Might not be safe.”

Granny Smith snorted, but Lapis saw her ears twitch back for a fraction of a second. “Nonsense. This barn’s got strong timbers. It’s stood strong fer fifty-odd years, and it’ll stand fer another ten yet.”

“Well, the timbers might stand, but it’s more the floor and walls I’m worried about. If there’s this much water damage down here, who knows where else it’s gotten to,” Lapis said. “Especially considering that you’re uphill - it’s pretty tough for water to seep into anything at the top of a hill, so if it has, then it’s gathering somewhere. If you have a cellar, maybe, I’d check for flooded rooms. …And then, otherwise, I’d stay out of the cellar as much as I could, considering what kind of bad shape the floor might be in,” he added on. “Of course, I’d get a second opinion before you take my word for it, but that’s what I’m suspecting.”

“Huh,” Granny Smith grunted, beginning the slow, creaky process of turning toward the door. “’Spose Ah best leave yeh to it an’ check the cellar, then. Lemme get Macintosh, an’ then Ah’ll git outta yer mane.”

“Thanks,” Lapis said. “And I’m sorry for the bad news.”

Granny Smith hmphed. “Don’ be sorry. Not like yer the reason fer any of it.” She tottered off, leaving Lapis staring at the piece of warped trim.

I know Mend-Alls can put together broken things, but… unbending bent things? Lapis sighed, then carefully gripped the trim piece with his telekinesis. Let’s find out.

Slowly, cautiously, Lapis began trying to straighten out the trim - and, to his dismay, it snapped almost immediately. Closer inspection of the break revealed that the trim-piece, too, was saturated. Wow, this building’s basically made of wet cardboard at this point, huh?

Lapis put the pieces back together, and they repaired themselves with the usual flash of light - then, he tried to straighten the board, only to find it snap along the same line. Well, shit. Looks like I’ll need to point them to a professional carpenter.

“Lapis?” a deep voice asked. Lapis blinked, then turned around to find a well-built earth-pony stallion with a maroon coat and an orange mane poking his head into the room. Lapis recognized the other stallion immediately - it was Big Macintosh, the pony who’d burnt his hooves propping up a cauldron full of oatmeal during the Summer Sun Celebration.

“Hey, Big Mac,” Lapis said, carefully setting down the trim-piece. “How’s it going? Your hooves heal up okay?”

“E-yup,” Big Mac replied, stepping the rest of the way into the room and grinning. “Was hopin’ Ah’d see you before the next time somethin’ near me was broken, but Ah s’pose Ah’ve been keepin’ busy.”

“You and me both,” Lapis replied, grimacing. “I swear, if I have to patch one more pegasus-shaped hole in somepony’s thatch, I’ll start talking to Mayor Mare about restricting the airspace above Ponyville. But anyway, yeah, I would’ve come and found you if I got a spare moment…”

And if you weren’t literally working next to a protagonist for about as long as I’ve been here.

“…it might’ve saved me from having to deliver some bad news like this,” Lapis finished.

Big Mac nodded, his face grim as he glanced at the trim-piece. “E-yup. Ah s’pect Ah already know what it is, but go on and tell me anyway, just in case.”

Lapis relayed his suspicions about the state of the house’s stability, and though Big Mac’s face appeared to remain stoic, Lapis thought he saw a faint tightness building around the bigger stallion’s eyes as he spoke, and especially as he briefly broke and re-mended the trim-piece to demonstrate his point.

“…So, assuming Granny Smith finds what I think she’ll find, I’d start worrying about finding the lumber for a new house,” Lapis finished.

“E-yup,” Big Mac replied. Then he sighed. “And we just finished buckin’ the Gala orchards. Applejack won’t be glad to hear this.”

“Granny Smith certainly wasn’t,” Lapis replied. “…Speaking of her, you think she’s mad at me or something? She didn’t seem too glad to see me.”

“Nope. She’s just happier when us Apples can take care of ourselves,” Big Mac replied, half a crooked grin curling across his face. “She was here when Ponyville was built, an’ helped build the town into what it is today. It’s as like as not that she helped raise this barn.”

“Oh. Yeah, I get it,” Lapis said, glancing around the building again. “Quite the achievement - this house and the whole town, I mean. Fixing this stuff on a regular basis kinda drives home how much work must’ve gone into it all.”

“E-yup. Nopony builds a town alone, though,” Big Mac responded. “…Say, what’re you up to today?”

“More than I’m comfortable with, but it’s not all work,” Lapis replied. “I’ve got a roof to patch up and a rabbit hutch to look over, but once those are done, I’ll be headed to a little concert - a friend of mine is performing. You?”

“Well, Ah figured Ah might go out and about in town today,” Big Mac said, “what with Princess Celestia comin’ to visit and all.”

Lapis immediately felt his brain short-circuit. “Wait, she’s doing what? Here? Today?”

“You didn’t hear?” Big Mac asked. “Well, she is. That’s what all those banners and flower-baskets are about for.”

“Huh,” Lapis muttered, doing his best to suppress his rising panic. “Well, uh, here’s hoping it goes better than last time.”

Big Mac chuckled. “E-yup. Though, if you wanna get those jobs done ‘fore she arrives, Ah suppose Ah’d better not keep you here too long.”

“Uh, yeah,” Lapis said, glancing over at the trim-piece. “Thanks for the heads-up, and… well, listen, I know there’s usually a fee involved with getting me to come over, but seeing as I wasn’t really able to fix anything, and you’re probably going to need all the spare bits you can get, there’s no charge.”

Big Mac grinned that crooked grin again. “One more thing for Granny Smith to be grumpy over, but Ah’ll thank you for it. Now get on outta here, ‘fore the princess arrives.”

“Right. See you around, Big Mac!” Lapis said, turning for the door.

“C’mon back now, ya hear?” Big Mac replied, just as Lapis reached the front door. He glanced around for any sign of Applejack, then hurried on his way down the hill towards Ponyville, his mind racing as the last thing Princess Celestia had said to him echoed in his head:

“I look forward to seeing you again, Lapis Print.”

The first place that Lapis went, once he got back to Ponyville, was his shop. If Princess Celestia really was coming here again, he needed to keep her as far away from his base of operations as possible, just in case she would somehow be able to glean anything from it about who, or what, Lapis was. Ergo, he’d need to swap out his tools now, so that he wouldn’t have to do it again until after she left.

Lapis trotted up to the door of his shop, pausing briefly to inspect the three-pointed arch of blue trim he’d finally set up around his front door. He hadn’t had any further griffon guests yet, but he was sure they’d happen eventually.

Shrugging, Lapis pushed the door open - and stopped in his tracks, the sight of what was beyond his door pushing all other thoughts from his mind.

Inside his house, there were dozens - if not hundreds - of pigeons, gathered together like a feathery blanket atop every spare inch of open space that wasn’t the floor, their quiet coos and murmurs overlapping into a hushed hubbub that almost reminded Lapis of a busy library. As he watched, a few of the pigeons took notice of him, letting loose a hurried flurry of calls and trills that drove the other birds in the building to fall silent and look up at him.

“…Nikki?!” Lapis called. “Could you come here a second?!”

The sound of wingbeats started emerging from Lapis’ bedroom, and a moment later, Nikki fluttered out of the hallway to land on the floor in front of Lapis, shooting an unimpressed look at him as if to say ‘Yeah?’

“Alright, I know I said I wouldn’t ask what you’re up to,” Lapis said, stepping inside and shutting the door, “and I’m still not going to. I just need to know- whatever’s going on here, is it a temporary thing, or-?”

Nikki nodded, and Lapis pressed on. “Okay, good. Cool. Apparently, Princess Celestia’s coming to visit Ponyville today, so I’m probably not going to be back in the building for a while. I’m just here to swap out some of my tools, and then I’ll be out of… all your collective feathers,” Lapis said, looking around at the assembled masses of pigeons. “Again, I’m not going to ask what’s going on, but… all your friends here know what a toilet is, right?”

One of the pigeons on Lapis’ table let out an outraged squawk. Nikki shot the offender a flat look, causing them to fall silent mid-screech, then she nodded at Lapis again.

“Okay, good,” Lapis said, rubbing his forehead and levitating his tools out of his saddlebag and into the rack on the closet. “And just to make sure the entire flock knows, the conditions for staying here are: don’t make a mess, don’t set anything on fire, and don’t get the attention of Pinkie and her friends. All of you got it?” he asked, turning to look around at all the other pigeons in the building.

The flock of pigeons responded in the affirmative, either via nodding or by a quick, hushed coo. Lapis levitated a pair of scissors, a tube of glue (which was, as far as he could tell, not made from anything sinister), and a small box of horseshoe-shaped pins out of his closet, quickly tucking them into his saddlebags alongside a small rubber mallet, a dense roll of twine, and a narrow-pointed brush. “Alright, good. I’m heading out now. Nikki, if there’s any trouble, come get me, okay?”

Nikki nodded again, and Lapis headed out the door again. He glanced over his shoulder just in time to watch some of the pigeons taking up posts at each of his windows, looking at the skies above as if keeping watch. The sight of a couple of the birds fluttering out of his chimney almost gave him pause, but he forced himself to turn away and start for Cantering Boulevard. Nope. Not going to ask.

The roof job went exactly as Lapis expected, and the rabbit hutch turned out to have a corner of its chicken-wire mesh pulled out of place. Both were easily attended to, and Lapis was pleased to find himself done before noon. Should give me enough time to get to Town Hall for the concert, he thought, starting in that direction-

“Hey, Lapis! Over here!”

Lapis paused, frowning as he recognized Lyra’s voice, and looked around for her. He spotted her and Bon Bon almost immediately; they were sitting at a table just outside one of the nearby stores, just across the road from him - unfortunately, that store happened to be Sugarcube Corner Bakery.

Bon Bon must’ve guessed what was wrong, because she rolled her eyes and said, “Pinkie’s not over here, Lapis. We were just in there, and we haven’t seen her all day.”

Oh. Lapis heaved a quick sigh of relief, then trotted over to their table. “Hey, guys. What’re you over here for, I thought that the concert was today.”

“Well, it was,” Bon Bon said. “It got cancelled.”

“Two of the big acts’ musical instruments went missing,” Lyra added, her ears tucking back. “Lonely Road lost his harmonica, and Quick Hoof can’t find her banjo. I’ve still got my lyre, though!” she said, grinning and levitating a small, horseshoe-shaped harp up to her side.

“It might’ve saved me some trouble, too,” Bon Bon said, tucking her own ears back and looking to the side. “I must have gotten a bad recipe for pecan bars, because what I pulled out of the oven was just a block of burnt nuts and sugary goop. It took forever to scrape out of the baking pan,” she finished, shivering.

“Anyway, how’s your day been, Lapis?” Lyra asked. “Any interesting repair jobs?”

Lapis grimaced. “Well, ‘interesting’ isn’t the word I’d use, but the Apple family might find themselves out of a house for a while.”

“What?” Bon Bon asked, pulling her head back, Lyra blinking in surprise.

“Not sure how, or why, but at least some of the timbers on the bottom floor of their house is waterlogged,” Lapis said, taking a seat by the table. “I don’t know much about architecture, but from what I do know, that’s bad news for the structural integrity of the building.”

“No kidding,” Bon Bon muttered, tapping her chin with a hoof. “Wow. Well, I’m sure they’ll be able to find somepony to host them somewhere in Ponyville.”

“Twilight’s library has more spare rooms than you’d think,” Lyra said, perking up. “There’s a whole basement and everything! I accidentally wandered down there during Pinkie’s Welcome-To-Ponyville party…” She paused, cocking her head. “Hey, wait a second. Lapis, isn’t Applejack a friend of Pinkie’s? Have you given up on the whole avoiding-her-friends thing?”

Lapis firmly shook his head. “Nope. I got lucky - Applejack was heading into the orchard with an empty cart at about the same time that I was headed over to their house.”

Lyra frowned, a worried crease forming on her brow, and Bon Bon groaned, leaning forward and tucking back her ears. “Lapis, this is ridiculous, and you know it. Could you please introduce yourself to Pinkie already? I promise you, it’ll save you a lot more time and effort than you think.”

“Okay,” Lapis sighed, facehoofing, “I see your point… but, maybe we should take a second to run through the list of stuff that Pinkie’s done. First off, she’s been chasing me on sight ever since I showed up in Ponyville-”

“Only because you somehow escaped from her the first time she spotted you,” Lyra said, raising a hoof.

“-continuing up to, and including, earlier this week, when I only managed to escape from her by way of combining the mask with an invisibility spell. And that nearly gave me a headache for the rest of the night,” Lapis finished. Bon Bon’s eyebrows raised in surprise, but Lapis pushed on. “Bon Bon, you said on the morning of the Summer Sun Celebration that Pinkie’s broken into ponies’ houses and unpacked their stuff so she could host parties there, and I can personally confirm that she’s broken into my house, while I was in it, for no apparent purpose besides nearly eating a whole batch of scones and doing my dishes.”

Lyra’s eyes widened, her ears tucking back as she stared down at the table, and Lapis decided it was time to drive his point home. “So, yeah. I get that the two of you are basically okay with her, and I don’t know how much of her behavior the two of you have seen. But from the parts of it I’ve seen, I feel justified in thinking she might be kinda crazy, and in being more than a little scared of her.”

“Well, she’s definitely a little crazy,” Bon Bon muttered.

“But Pinkie means well, I promise,” Lyra added, though her ears stayed tucked back. “She just wants to make sure you feel welcome, Lapis.”

“She does,” Lapis agreed. “But right now, she’s making me feel like I’m being hunted, and it’s going to take a while for me to get past that. A long while, if she keeps up the way she has been.”

Lyra opened her mouth to respond, but at that moment, a pastel-blue mare with a pink mane walked up to the table, bearing two plates - one with a slice of cake, and one with a slice of pie - on her back. “Order for Misses Heartstrings and Bon?”

“That’s us. Thank you, Mrs. Cake,” Bon Bon said, as the mare set the plates on the table. Mrs. Cake glanced over at Lapis once she was done. “And anything for you, dear?”

“No thanks,” Lapis said, though he was starting to feel a little hungry. “I’m just chatting with some friends.”

“Well, I’ll leave the three of you to it!” Mrs. Cake chimed, turning to walk back into the bakery.

Bon Bon waited until she was gone, then turned back to Lapis, who was just starting to stand up. “Hey, where are you headed?”

Lapis paused. He’d been about to head to his shop again, to try and come up with some means of steering clear of the Princess, but he couldn’t well just say that. “…Well, for some reason, Nikki’s got just about every pigeon in Ponyville holed up in my shop, and I was going to go check up on them.”

Bon Bon frowned. “That’s… odd. I guess I’d better not stop you, but before you go… when’d you learn an invisibility spell? Aren’t those specialist material, or something?”

“Yeah, they’re definitely tougher,” Lapis muttered, wincing as he recalled the headache. “I learned it not long after I picked up the Hornlight spell - the Hornlight made light magic seem easy enough, I thought I’d try another spell from that school. Turns out, not so much. Anyway, yeah, I’d better get out of here,” Lapis said, turning to leave. “There’s probably enough loose pigeon feathers on my floor to stuff a pillow with, and I’d rather sweep it up before it gets into the nooks and crannies.”

Bon Bon snorted. “That’d be a small pillow. …Hey, be careful on your way back, yeah?”

Lapis cocked an eyebrow. “Careful? How come?”

“I’ve been seeing animals acting skittish all day,” Bon Bon said. “…It’s just a hunch, but I get the feeling something might be about to happen. Besides the Princess showing up, I mean.”

At once, Lapis remembered the strange behavior of the critters he’d seen on Sweet Apple Acres, and a familiar tingle began to build in his gut. “…Yeah, me too. Thanks, Bon Bon. If anything comes up, I’ll try to send Nikki your way.”

“I’ll look out for her,” Bon Bon called, as Lapis started back for his workshop at a quick trot.

Is it just me, Lapis thought as he headed back to his house, or does Bon Bon have a weirdly specific patchwork of knowledge?

The animals thing, he could explain on his own - all it took was growing up somewhere with woods nearby to figure out that the wildlife was better at predicting natural trouble - or natural disasters - than people were. Calling invisibility spells “specialist material” was a little strange, though: knowing in the first place that invisibility spells were difficult didn’t too improbable to Lapis, though he wasn’t familiar with how much magical knowledge most non-unicorns possessed.

But describing them as “specialist material” is kind of a… well, specialized use of language, Lapis realized, his brow furrowing as he turned the corner onto his shop’s street. And… when I was talking to her about my overdue fines at the library, didn’t she say something about the “base fine for petty theft?”

“Maybe she was a cop, or something?” Lapis muttered, glancing down at the ground - then he paused. …Why does the ground have polka dots?

Lapis looked up, and realized that the polka dots were shadows - the shadows of dozens, maybe hundreds of small, spherical objects gently floating down from the sky. Lapis watched as one of them, a fuzzy, pale yellow ball, drifted right in front of his face - then it stopped there as the narrow, translucent wings on its sides began to buzz.

“What?” Lapis muttered. The fuzzy ball shifted, opening a large, glittering pair of compound eyes and a small, smiling mouth, which opened to release a faint, buzzing chirrup.

Lapis would’ve thought it was cute, but as he looked around at the cloud of creatures raining down on Ponyville from above, all the could focus on was that familiar tingle of dread in his gut. “When did I see you before…”

Then, off to one side, one of the bugs stretched its mouth impossibly wide, its gaping maw lunging forward to engulf the raised hoof of a small foal. For a second, Lapis’ heart stopped - then the bug popped off, revealing that the foal’s hoof was soaked with drool but otherwise unharmed, and the candy-apple that they’d been holding had been stripped down to a popsicle stick and a pile of seeds.

“Oh, shit,” Lapis muttered, a jolt of realization shooting through him. In the next second he was galloping back to his shop at full speed, screams rising around him to punctuate an growing buzz like an industrial shredder, that seemed to come from every direction. He burst through the door to his shop just as a pair of pigeons swooped down out of his fireplace, releasing frantic squawks.

Oh, well this explains the pigeons, a small, detached mind of Lapis’ brain commented. Somehow, they knew this was coming. They’re taking shelter. They never warned me, because I didn’t ask. Maybe I should ask about stuff more often.

“Hey, guys, I think I figured out why you’re in here,” Lapis shouted, slamming the door behind him and slinging his saddlebags onto their hook, levitating his broom out of the closet and staring around at the crowd of pigeons that surrounded him. “I’m pretty sure they can’t open doors, so… none of you open the door, I guess?”

Nikki cooed as she flew down onto Lapis’ head, and wasted no time glaring down at him over his horn. “Right,” Lapis muttered. “You can’t open doors, either. Okay, uh, however you all got in here, I need you to guard those spots, and get me if they start coming in that way so I can do something about it. Ready?”

The flock of pigeons exchanged doubtful glances. Then, they and Lapis both turned to look as a series of pinkish-purple waves of light started washing through the wall, Lapis’ horn tingling as it passed through him. He glanced outside, and saw that all the bug-things had stopped midair, looking almost confused as pulse after pulse of magic flowed over their bodies.

Then the pulses stopped. One of the bugs turned away from a pony’s sandwich and flew over to Lapis’ door, and for a brief, beautiful second, Lapis thought the crisis was averted.

Then the bug flew downward, and in a single bite that scraped like nails on a chalkboard, it ate his metal doorknob.

“…O-kay then,” Lapis breathed. “New plan, anyone?”

A second later, the door began to swing open, and suddenly all was chaos. Lapis slammed himself against the door, holding it shut even as a half-dozen panicked coos began to sound across the room. Lapis gritted his teeth, looking out through the giant window of his storefront, and he felt his heart drop as he saw the bugs biting chunks out of the corner of his house-

“Stay inside!” he yelled, and before he knew when or how he’d done it, he was outside, using his telekinesis to hold the door shut even as he started whacking the bugs off the corners of his house with the broom. It was a small relief they didn’t seem to be touching his roof, or Lapis himself - still, at the speed they were gnawing, he was going to end up with some unwanted doorways. Lapis started making frantic circles of the house, spinning the broom in circles like a weed-whacker to smack the bugs off his walls, but they just kept coming-

Nikki was there as he rounded a corner, swooping toward one of the offending things and making a sharp right turn just in time to deliver a resounding smack with the flat of her wing. The bug got knocked fifteen feet clear in the opposite direction of Lapis’ house, Lapis sending four more in its direction as Nikki wheeled around to make another pass. He blinked, shocked, as a fifth bug was lauched away, and then a sixth. Two more pigeons followed behind Nikki, then four, then a dozen-

And all at once, his house was engulfed by a swooping, squawking whirlwind of pigeons and bugs, the papery buzzing of the insects’ wings like a bass line under the irregular staccato of the birds’ broad strikes. The bugs that got slapped didn’t come back, but there were just more and more taking their place, several of the pigeons settling to the ground and opening their beaks to pant for breath even as the bugs grew more numerous, the small cloud that split off to pursue a screaming blue blur doing nothing to diminish their numbers. Lapis set his jaw, raising the broom again even as he felt himself starting to grow tired, and-

Suddenly, the cacophony gained a melody. Lapis paused, cocking his head, and realized that somewhere, someone was playing music. It sounded like a whole marching band, complete with tuba and cymbals, but that was ridiculous, surely nobody-

The bugs began bobbing up and down in the air, and after a few seconds’ consternation, Lapis was more bewildered yet by the realization that they were dancing. Slowly, still bobbing to the beat, the bugs touched down on the ground and started hopping down the street, in the direction of the song. Lapis looked along their path just in time to see Pinkie Pie, of all ponies, slowly cross the street about a hundred yards down the road, wearing half an orchestra’s worth of instruments on her body, and a look on her face that he’d never seen before: one that said she was done with this mess.

And for some reason, somehow, the bugs began to hop along behind her single file, following Pinkie as she slowly, deliberately bounced across the street. She didn’t even bother to glance in Lapis’ direction, only her song lingering behind as she rounded a corner and disappeared from view.

Lapis slowly, carefully looked around, panting with exertion as he swept the street for any sign of the bugs. And, amazingly, there was none - it seemed they’d all vanished, or else followed Pinkie to… wherever she was going. All Lapis knew was that she was going away, and that was good enough for him.

The street was trashed, though. Lapis grimaced as he took in the sight of the houses surrounding his - there were trails eaten through the thatch of ponies’ roofs, rafters jutting from beneath the torn sheets of straw. Everywhere the bugs had found corners, they’d eaten them - most of the stairs that he could see had been smoothed out into ramps, and small, cookie-cutter holes were visible all over every piece of trim and siding he could see. And the gardens… well, they might still make good compost, but that was about it.

With some trepidation, Lapis turned to look at his own house - and found it to be in shockingly good condition. He still had some chunks missing from his walls, but his house didn’t look nearly as Swiss-cheesed as the rest of the buildings around him, the worst of the damage seeming to be a few bites that had been taken out of the trim around his door.

Slowly, beginning to breathe more deeply, Lapis looked down and saw the crowd of pigeons sitting around the edges of his house. Most of them had risen to their feet, but a few were still spread-eagled on the ground, their tiny chests shivering as they tried to catch their breath. Nikki was among those who’d gotten their strength back, and after briefly ruffling her wings, she flew up onto his back, a triumphant smirk on her face as she took in the face of Lapis’ house.

“…I know I told you to stay inside, but… thanks,” Lapis said. “All of you,” he added, looking down at the rest of the pigeons, who called out a few exhausted trills in response. “Alright, good work, everybody take five.”

Lapis was only barely surprised to learn that the pigeons seemed to know what this meant, most of them taking for the skies at once, those that remained only moving to hop or scoot out of Lapis’ way, Nikki remaining on Lapis’ back as he slowly, gingerly re-entered his house. The inner half of Lapis’ doorknob fell off the door as he opened it, rolling loudly across the wooden floorboards before stopping against the far wall with a thunk. Miraculously, nothing else seemed damaged - there was a light dusting of pigeon feathers all over the floor, and something in a corner of the room that might’ve been a dropping, but nothing had chunks bitten out of it… except the firewood inside Lapis’ closed wood-stove.

I don’t remember closing that, Lapis thought, ducking down to look through the glass window of the wood-stove. Did the pigeons do it?

“Gotta say, Nikki, you pigeons know how to defend a house,” Lapis muttered, Nikki quietly shuffling on his back. They must’ve, yeah - the chimney, that must be how all the pigeons got inside! Yeah, and then they shut the door behind them when the bugs showed up-

Lapis felt his blood run cold. “There are two rooms that connect to that chimney,” he muttered.

He turned around, marching to the closet, levitating the broom up to his side as he pulled open the closet door and stepped inside. Then, he shut the door behind him as he descended the basement stairs, entering the lantern-lit room to see…

Chaos.

Everything that had been on a hook, wasn’t. The bugs had eaten half of the set of hammers - literally, they had taken each hammer and eaten it in half - and gnawed the hooks off the walls. Paper and metal scraps were strewn about the room, tools haphazardly scattered across what had once been tidy workspaces, the floorboards looking more worm-eaten than the timbers of the Apple family’s house had.
“You’re kidding me,” Lapis muttered, the corners of his mouth twitching upward as he looked around the room. “You’ve gotta be joking.” He advanced toward the workbench, his heart dropping as he realized all three of the books on his workbench were open.

Lapis frantically grabbed the first of the books - the worn notebook with blank pages that he’d discovered on the bench when he moved in - and was only slightly relieved to see that all the eaten pages had been blank to begin with. Trixie’s copy of Magic 4 Dummies, however, wasn’t so lucky - there were multiple chunks bitten out of the edges, as if the bugs had been trying to nibble the crust off a sandwich. They’d seemed to have a taste for the binding - most of it was gone, and loose pages kept trying to fall out of the book as Lapis inspected it.

Lapis took a moment to look back at Nikki. She seemed as aghast as he was, staring around the destroyed room with wide eyes. She looked back over at him, then released a sorrowful coo.

“Hey, it’s not your fault,” Lapis said, forcing himself to grin back at her. “I wouldn’t have remembered it either.”

Then, slowly, he took a deep breath and picked up the guide to artifice, fearing the worst… and found that, somehow, it looked undamaged. Whatever it was bound in, the bugs didn’t seem to have liked the taste - there were a few rings of tiny, serrated tooth-marks, but none had bitten deeper than a scratch or two. Lapis opened the book-

For a second or two, he couldn’t move. “Nikki?” Lapis asked.

Nikki hopped up onto Lapis’ shoulder, but remained silent. “I think… they ate the words.”

The pages were undamaged, without so much as a scratch on them. But the paragraphs of text looked as if they had chunks bitten out of them, as if the bugs had scraped the ink off the paper with their teeth. Slowly, carefully, Lapis began to flip through the book, and found that every single page of text had been eaten at least in part.

“They did,” Lapis muttered, the corners of his mouth twitching up, his throat clenching shut against the hysterical laugh rising in his chest. “They ate them. They couldn’t eat the book, so they ate the words.”

There were pages of information about artifice in that book, Lapis thought, and the laugh died in his chest, smothered out by something that pulsed with heat. Pages. Pages of knowledge, instructions, information about how to keep trying, to make magic work in a way that didn’t leave my head pounding, to try and-

Something metal clanged to the floor behind Lapis, and he gasped- then found he couldn’t breathe. He fell, and he never hit the ground, rising with the heat in his chest, hot enough to char, his vision going white as it pounded past his eyes and reached his horn-

His head was splitting open. His magic ripped itself free of his body, bursting away from his horn in a wave of candelight, every loose object shuddering and churning around him like sand on a vibrating dish. Another pulse washed from his horn, and then another, the edges of Lapis’ vision darkening as he continued to choke, his own magic tearing his strength from his body as it ripped the light of the world away from his eyes.

“You good, Lyra?” Bon Bon asked, panting for breath as she slung the fluffy pink towel back over her back.

“Uh, I think so,” Lyra replied. “…They ate a chunk out of my tail, though?”

Bon Bon looked back at Lyra, saw the crescent-shaped bite taken out of her tail hairs, and sighed. “Yes, you’re good.”

“Great!” Lyra replied, setting down the plate she’d been using to swat away bugs. Bon Bon had been surprised - Lyra was a pretty good hoof, or horn, with that plate. Wonder how well she could do with a shield?

Lyra glanced down to her side and gasped, her ears perking up as a grin lit her face. “Hey, look!” Her horn lit up orange, and a second or two later, her lyre floated up in front of her chest, Lyra beaming at Bon Bon. “At least the bugs didn’t get this, right?”

I hope I never find out, Bon Bon thought, a smile growing on her face. “Yeah. At least that’s true.”

“What were those, anyway?” Lyra asked, glancing around at their surroundings. “They were kinda cute, but they did a real number on Ponyville.”

“I… don’t have a clue,” Bon Bon found herself admitting. I’ll have to submit a report… Sweet Celestia, I’m never going to hear the end of this one. “But whatever Pinkie did to stop them, it worked. Guess we’ll have to ask her, next time she drops by for a sweet exchange.”

“Ooh!” Lyra said, her eyes widening. “Wonder what we could swap with her for those meringue cookies!”

Bon Bon opened her mouth to reply - and a wave of magic burst from the middle of the village. Lyra turned to look, her mouth widening in shock, as Bon Bon lunged at her, shoving a table to the side as she knocked Lyra to the ground, hoping it would shield her and Lyra from the wave.

It didn’t. The wave passed right through the table, and Bon Bon clamped her hooves to her cheeks as something in her mouth jerked, a spike of pain penetrating past her gum and into her jaw. What the hay?!

Another pulse washed over Bon Bon, her hair standing on end. Then another, and another… and no more.

“Ow,” Lyra wheezed. “Bon Bon… can’t breathe…”

“Lyra?!” Bon Bon shouted, bolting to her hooves - and Lyra sat up immediately, sucking in a gasp. “Whoo! That was exciting - maybe save the tackle-hugs for pillow fights, though?”

Bon Bon huffed, facehoofing as her jaw continued to throb, her pulse pounding in her ears. “Lyra, I swear to Celestia… Don’t scare me like that!”

“Hey, you’re the pony who landed on my stomach,” Lyra replied, grinning. “…What was that, anyway?”

Bon Bon felt around the inside of her mouth, and her confusion only grew. “Whatever it was, I think it straightened out my crooked tooth.”

“Um…” Lyra said, not meeting Bon Bon’s eyes as she clambered to her hooves. “It might not just be your tooth.”

“What?” Bon Bon asked, then she caught sight of her reflection in a window, and got to watch the glare melt off her face. “…My mane, too?”

“Well, yeah, that, too.” Lyra said. “And maybe some other stuff.”

Bon Bon turned to look, and felt her eyes widen as she stared down the street.

The bugs hadn’t left behind much debris- most of what they’d destroyed, they’d eaten shortly afterward, with the exception of some food and what had been a scattered patch of acorns.
Except, now… they weren’t scattered at all. Nothing was. All the litter on the streets had been gathered into perfectly straight lines, some criss-crossing like a chessboard while others stretched long and unbroken down the road. On top of that, there was new litter on the streets: piles of pointed, vivid green strips…

“Grass clippings?” Lyra said, cocking her head. “Man, somepony picked a weird time to test a lawn-mowing spell.”

“What do you mean, lawn-mowing…” Bon Bon began, but as she looked, she saw what Lyra meant. Not only had all the litter been organized, but all the lawns had been mowed perfectly level with each other, as if somepony with too much time on their hooves had taken a ruler and a pair of scissors to every single blade. The more Bon Bon looked, the more bizarre order she saw - fences were washed clean, other ponies stepping out of their homes looked fresh out of some spa treatment, and even the end of a particularly low-hanging cloud had been given perfectly square corners. The effects didn’t extend all the way down the street - it looked like they’d only affected a circular cut of Ponyville, one that Bon Bon and Lyra had only barely been inside.

A high, frantic trill sounded from above, Bon Bon’s ears pricking up in response. A pigeon was flying toward her from the center of the circle, about as fast as she’d ever seen a pigeon fly…

“Wait,” Lyra asked, her eyes widening. “Is that… Nikki?”

“Lapis,” Bon Bon muttered.

They arrived at Lapis’ workshop soon afterward, Bon Bon barely pausing to register the missing doorknob before she spun and kicked the door open.

“Lapis!” Lyra shouted. “Hey! You okay? Nikki came and got us, where are you?”

Bon Bon didn’t bother with words, brushing past Lyra and heading down the hallway that led to Lapis’ bedroom - but Nikki, the pigeon, got in her way, touching down on the hallway and shaking her head no.

“We don’t have time for this, Nikki,” Bon Bon said. “Where is he?”

Nikki rolled her eyes, and Bon Bon had to resist the urge to whack the pigeon with her tail as she flew back into the front of Lapis’ house - then, she flew to the door behind the counter, and tugged at the handle.

“In here?” Lyra asked, opening the door to reveal a supply closet. Nikki flew inside at once, out of Bon Bon’s sight, and Lyra cocked her head as the sound of Nikki’s wings flapping didn’t stop. “…Nikki, what do you need an axe for?”

Frowning, Bon Bon trotted into the closet, and found Nikki frantically tugging at a fire-pony’s axe hung on a tool rack - the axe, however, was refusing to budge. Bon Bon huffed, then raised a hoof to lift the axe -

And it stayed put. Bon Bon frowned, then checked the back of the axe, and found it was affixed to a cylinder on the tool rack. “What in Celestia’s name…?”

The sound of wings flapping grabbed Bon Bon’s attention, and she looked back to see Nikki tugging at the doorknob of the closet door, trying to pull it shut. Lyra cocked her head, confused - then, frowning, she shut the door, her horn bursting into orange light as the door blocked all light from the window.

Nikki flew back to the axe again and tried to flap her wings, but could only manage a few feeble flutters. Bon Bon grimaced, gingerly scooping up the bird with a hoof and dumping her on Lyra’s back, then reached out and tried to lift the axe again. This time, it moved - the cylinder turned, and then the wall that the tool-rack was affixed to swung outward like a door, revealing a narrow, steep staircase.

“Huh,” Lyra breathed, from just behind Bon Bon. “Secret basement. Neat.”

“Quiet,” Bon Bon muttered. Something about this place was giving her a bad feeling, and it wasn’t just how silent the building was.

Slowly, cautiously, she descended the basement stairs, entering a small, open room that looked at first glance like a hurricane had gone through a smith-pony’s workshop. There were hammers and tongs scattered everywhere, scraps of paper and metal tracing smoothly-curving lines from the walls of the room to the middle. And in the center of it all was Lapis Print, lying unmoving on his side. His eyes and mouth were shut, and his mane and tail were spread haphazardly across the floor - he didn’t lie down, he collapsed.

“Lapis!” Lyra said, and she stepped past Bon Bon to check on him. “Hey, wakey-wakey! Naptime’s over, c’mon, up and at ‘em!”

Bon Bon saw that he was breathing, and heaved a quick sigh of relief. “He’s unconscious, Lyra, not just asleep.”

“Unconscious?” Lyra asked, turning to stare briefly at Bon Bon. “But why would he…” She looked down, and seemed to notice the spirals of scrap for the first time. “Oh. Whoa. So, I might’ve figured out why he’s unconscious.”

“Not the time for jokes, Lyra,” Bon Bon muttered, stepping forward and slinging the other unicorn across her back. Oof. He’s heavier than he looks. “We’ve got to get him to a hospital, stat.”

“I’m not joking,” Lyra said, her ears half-flicking back in annoyance. “…But yeah, it can wait. Stay put, I’ll get the door.”

It was almost as hard as lugging a piano upstairs. Lapis was a lot lighter than a piano, but he was also a lot less rigid - which was a good thing, but still inconvenient. Then there was the issue of getting him out of the closet. Bon Bon did her best not to let Lapis knock his head into anything, but there was a close call involving a pry-bar.

Still, eventually, Bon Bon managed to step into the main shop, and hurried out the door and into the main street-

“Lyra, Bon Bon? -Oh, goodness! Is that Lapis?”

“Yeah,” Bon Bon replied, glancing over to see who’d spoken - to her surprise, it was Mayor Mare, who was now looking between Lapis and the eerily-neat streets around his house. “-I mean, ma’am yes ma’am. He’s alive, but unconscious.”

“Oh dear,” Mayor Mare said, trotting over. “Oh, dear oh dear. That’s the third repair-pony we’ve lost in three years, at this rate the whole town will be-!”

“He’s fine, ma’am,” Bon Bon said, rolling her eyes. “Thanks for your concern. But we still need to get him to a hospital.”

“A hospital?” Mayor Mare asked, suddenly snapped out of her thoughts. “…Wait, of course! What’s the matter with him?”

“I don’t know, I’m not a doctor-pony… but my best guess is some kind of magical exhaustion,” Bon Bon said, looking again at their tidied surroundings. “I get the feeling Lapis here might be responsible for that last blast of magic.”

“Not just any magical exhaustion,” Lyra said, grimacing. “I… might be wrong, but something about all this feels like a Harmonic Cascade.”

“A what?” Bon Bon and the mayor asked simultaneously.

Lyra groaned. “Look, it’s a long explanation, and I only really remember half of it. Bon Bon, I’ll tell you on the way there, but Mayor Mare, you’ll have to ask somepony who knows their magic better than I do.”

“Oh. Yes, I suppose so,” Mayor Mare replied. “I’m sure Twilight will know the answer.”

“Uh, yeah,” Lyra said, hesitating. “Twilight.”

Bon Bon cocked an eyebrow at her friend. Don’t do it, Lyra. Be strong, she thought.

“So, um, I’ve got a favor to ask,” Lyra said, awkwardly pawing at the ground with a hoof. “And it’s kind of a weird one. Could I bother you to maybe, possibly, not tell Twilight about who Lapis is?”

Darn it, Lyra. We don’t have time for this, hurry up!

Mayor Mare blinked, cocking her head. “What? Whatever for?”

“So, the thing is,” Lyra said, tucking her ears back, “he’s not exactly a party pony, and him and Twilight and Pinkie have kind of gotten off on the wrong hoof anyway. And for some reason, he’s decided that the best thing to do is to just… avoid them. Completely. And look, I get it’s weird, but he’s made it really clear that this is how he wants to go about things, and I just…” She sighed. “I don’t know, I feel like letting them figure out who did this while he’s unconscious would be… letting him down, I guess? Does that make any sense?”

“Lyra, come on!” Bon Bon huffed. “Some injuries have a time limit, you know!”

“…I suppose I understand,” Mayor Mare said. “It’s just…”

“It’s a lot, yeah,” Lyra agreed. “I’d take it up with him after he wakes up, maybe? But for now, could you please…?”

From atop Lyra’s back, Nikki shot Mayor Mare what looked like a surprisingly good pair of puppy-dog eyes. Mayor Mare resisted for a second, then sighed, her ears flopping back. “…Oh, alright.”

Lyra smiled. “Thank you, Ms. Mayor!” She turned, then hurried back down the road next to Bon Bon. “Okay, so, about what happened to Lapis. I took this class forever ago, and I’ve forgotten about half of it, but basically…”

Bon Bon listened, but only halfway. Between the discovery of Lapis' secret basement, and his apparent ability to cast invisibility spells, she was beginning to come up with some questions of her own for when Lapis woke up.

“…Ow,” he muttered. “Oh, everything hurts.”

Well, mostly my head, but everything else too, yeah.
Grimacing, he reached for the side of his bed, trying to grasp for a glass of water, a bottle of Advil, anything, but for some reason he couldn’t move his fingers. He frowned, then raised his hand up to his face and cracked his eyes open.

He regretted his decision almost at once. The light was blindingly bright, piercing his retinas with all the coarse precision of a rusty needle. He groaned, squinting through the pain until his vision cleared, and then inspected his hand -

Where his hand should’ve been, there was a cream-colored, cork-shaped hoof. And for a second, he felt like screaming.

Then something in his head clicked, and his memories came flooding back like a weight, his pulse surging as his adrenaline kicked in a few seconds too late. Oh, yeah. That happened. Right.
Okay, before anything else happens, back in character, quick.

My name is Lapis Print. I was raised by griffons, and I work as a repair-pony in Ponyville. I am, and always have been, a unicorn from Equestria. I am not, and never have been, an alien monkey from another dimension.
Act natural. And… go.

Slowly, Lapis opened his eyes the rest of the way, taking in his surroundings with a wary eye. He was in a hospital, lying on his back on a narrow mattress beneath a filmy, pure-white sheet. It felt like he was wearing a hospital gown, too, and there was something rhythmically beeping off to the side of his head.

A set of slow, heavy hoofsteps approached the door, and Lapis turned his head to look, expecting some pony wearing a nurse’s uniform (for absolutely no good reason, besides thematic consistency.) He was surprised to instead see a black-and-white-striped hoof bearing a set of golden bracelets cross the threshold, followed shortly afterward by the similarly-patterned, mohawked head of a zebra. She blinked at him with familiar aquamarine eyes, then smiled.

“Well, if it isn’t my barrel-masked friend,” she said. “How are you, now that your rest is at an end?”

…Zecora? Lapis thought. I think that’s her name. “Headache,” he said. “But still alive and kicking. How come you’re here?”

Zecora smiled again. “Ponyville’s doctors and I both cure many things. I am here in their stead thanks to Lyra Heartstrings.” Her face grew grim. “Your condition, I fear, gave her quite a fright. She seemed quite sure help had to be me, or Twilight.”

…And that's one more pony for the Hide-Me Conspiracy. Lapis grimaced, then pushed himself a little further upright. “Right. Uh, thanks. Head’s still a little foggy. You know what happened to me?”

Zecora nodded. “Worry you had denied, and buried turmoil, and deep in your heart it began to boil. Far too much strain, you had put on yourself. When for magic you reached, empty you found your shelf. In fear and in panic, you called upon more, and tapped into a deeper, wilder store. But too much, you have found, such is to control - and so to the floor, you unconscious lolled.”

“Oh.” Lapis sighed. “Great. How long was I out for?”

“As much as you need, you will rest ‘til you get,” Zecora said, fixing him with a gentle, but firm stare. “The length of your sleep was almost a week yet.”

“A week?!” Lapis yelped, sitting bolt upright. Holy shit. Holy shit, the entire town was destroyed, and I’ve been unconscious for a week? Dear God, the backlog on my board must be insane!

“Fully restored, you have yet to be,” Zecora admonished, and Lapis snapped out of his panic just in time for the zebra to start staring him back down onto his blankets. “You will not work ‘til you’ve finished your recovery.”

“…I appreciate your concern,” Lapis began.

Zecora cut him off with a wave of her hoof, lifting a teapot into view from the end of his bed. “No ‘buts’ there will be, until restored you are true.” She poured out two cups of tea, taking one in a hoof and pushing the other to Lapis’ side. “Let us drink, and pass time. Tell me, Lapis, who are you?”

Lapis hesitated a moment, then reached out with his magic. He winced as his horn twinged - an awful kind of piercing pain, like poking a cavity in a tooth - but nonetheless managed to lift the teacup to his lips.

Zecora’s question hadn’t really been too deep, but for some reason, Lapis found himself giving it more thought than he’d expected. He thought about the pyramid of mana-siphons he’s set up that morning - or, well, a week ago, now. He remembered how he’d been nearly caught by Pinkie and Twilight before, and had only escaped them thanks to a combination of his own mask and the book that the Mayor had let him have from Trixie’s wagon, and how before that he’d forgotten his mask, and only escaped Pinkie thanks to Bon Bon’s choice of brunch. He thought about fighting off the bug-things, and how he'd been fighting a losing battle until Nikki and the other pigeons had pitched in.

Lyra and Bon Bon must’ve found me in the basement, Lapis realized…

…and I’d probably be dead if they hadn’t.

He took a careful sip of the tea, and found it was delicious - some kind of berry, with a vanilla-like undertone that reminded him of the way new paper smelled.

“I guess,” he said, “I’m somepony who’s been trying too much to rely on themselves.”

Zecora smiled.

Author's Note

Patch Notes:
- None for this one, because I'm uploading at 1:30 AM my time, and I'm tired.

Hey, here we are! Let me tell you, I’ve been looking forward to writing this one for about half a month now. The last chapters that I had this clear a vision for were the opening two, and seeing as those are the ones that probably got a lot of you hooked, you can decide for yourself whether there’s been a change in quality.

So, first things first: something else you might’ve noticed is that, as of this episode’s connection to Swarm of the Century without discussion of most of the episodes that happen in between then and Bridle Gossip, the timeline with which I’m working has now officially deviated from both of those provided earlier in the comments section by the generous tkepner (who started writing a story like this one first, by the by - it’s a Harry Potter crossover, so if you’re a Potterhead, go and check it out!)
I’ll go ahead and admit it - this split from the timeline, both with Swarm of the Century and with reference to “The Bunny Incident” of Applebuck Season, is a mistake on my part. I’ve been working according to the order of episodes so far, and thought that would be good enough to continue working with - however, seeing Winter Wrap-Up appear on that list before Fall-Weather Friends basically disabused me of that notion, barring an (in-universe) six-month-long break between episodes that would give Twilight and Pinkie altogether too much time to hunt down Graystreak McNeatfreak. As such, from here on out, I should basically be following the timeline found on tobyandmavisforever’s DeviantArt page, the link to which looks like this minus spaces:
[https: // antart.com/ tobyandmavisforever/ art/ Friendship-Is-Magic-Timeline-766636433]

Some of you might look at this timeline and think, “Huh. That puts Feeling Pinkie Keen, the episode in which Twilight conducts research on Pinkie Pie’s Pinkie Sense, as something that will probably happen next.” That’s because you’re right.
Anyway, aside from the deviations I mentioned above, I am still trying to stay consistent with canon. The most niche examples of this I can think of, besides obvious plot points being obvious, are the missing instruments that Lyra mentions to Lapis: both were taken by Pinkie, to help solve the Parasprite problem. On top of that, Lyra and Bon Bon were, as far as I could tell, outside of Sugarcube Corner with their slices of cake when the Parasprites started falling from the sky - at least, I think that’s Sugarcube Corner in the background, based on the gingerbread-house-ish decor and the half-barrel cupcake stand.

Next things next - props to Vaalintine, who’s been in the comments section putting together a fair few legitimate, not-insane-seeming reasons for Lapis to avoid Pinkie Pie! I basically stole from his work for Lapis’ explanations to Lyra and Bon Bon, though I can’t guarantee even that explanation will stick for too long without continuing to develop.

And finally: yes, I did hint at Celestia showing up in this episode a few different times. And yes, she never did. That's because she was intercepted outside of Ponyville by a parade, and shortly had to go deal with an infestation of some sort in Phillydelphia. Still, you have to wonder - what would she have seen, as she flew over Ponyville? How bad is Lapis' timing, and what might that kind of magical shockwave have reminded her of?

'Till the next one!

Lucky Number: Multi-Faceted Approaches

“…And here’s your change,” Bon Bon said, sliding a small stack of coins onto the counter.

Her customer, a lemon-yellow pegasus stallion wearing an equally-yellow hard hat, grinned as he slid the stack into his saddlebag, along with the bag of candies he’d just bought. “Thank you kindly.”

“Have a nice day,” Bon Bon said, as the stallion turned and left the shop, taking to the air a few seconds later.

Lyra, who was sitting next to Bon Bon behind the counter with a notebook, waited until the door had jingled shut to speak. “…Hard lemon drops?”

“Yes, he bought hard lemon drops.” Bon Bon said. “They’re great. You can carry around a bunch at once, they last a while, and they make your breath smell nice. What’s strange about that?”

“Bon Bon,” Lyra said, turning to reveal a playful grin, “if that stallion had been any brighter yellow, Princess Celestia would be moving him instead of the sun. He comes in here and buys the yellowest candy we have, and you don’t even bat an eye?”

“I sure don’t,” Bon Bon replied. “Our business is selling candy, not making jokes about it.”

“See, that’s only because you haven’t tried candy jokes yet,” Lyra said, moving to stand behind Bon Bon and sweeping her own hoof through the air. “Picture it: there you are, on the stage…”

“-I’d rather not.”

“…with dozens of ponies watching you. You walk to the edge of the stage, open your mouth, and wait for just a second - ‘I had a lollipop joke,’ you say, ‘but I’ve forgotten it.’”

“Please don’t.”

Lyra grinned. “The crowd leans forward. You smile, and say, ‘I’ve almost got it… it’s on the tip of my tongue.’”

Bon Bon groaned, but she felt a smirk spreading across her face. “Sweet Celestia, Lyra. That was terrible.”

“I do my best,” Lyra replied, brushing her hoof off on her coat. “Oh, hey, that reminds me. Have you gone by Town Hall lately? There’s a hole in the walls big enough, you can see the stage through it!”

Bon Bon looked up sharply. “The Parasprites got that far?” She’d learned what the bugs were called only two days before; the Mayor - accompanied by Twilight and her friends - had held a speech not long after Pinkie had led the Parasprites back into the Everfree.

“Yeah, there were a couple other buildings that got hit over there, but the Town Hall got the worst of it,” Lyra said, flipping open her notebook as she took a seat. “I was looking at it, though, and I was thinking - it really helps open up the building!”

Bon Bon snorted. “Well, I guess that’s true.”

“Hey, don’t take that tone with me,” Lyra said, mock-offended. “Listen, I know the Town Hall is already all open and all, with the arching ceilings and the windows and pillars and things, but don’t you think it’s a little… I don’t know, stuffy?”

“It can get a little gloomy when there’s no banners in there,” Bon Bon conceded. Especially in the winter, once the Hearth’s Warming Eve decorations come down.

“Exactly!” Lyra said, smiling over the top of her notebook. “But with that hole there, and all the natural light coming in, it feels like… I don’t know, like a real public area, where ponies can hang out. Like a… a picnic shelter or something, instead of just some wannabe-fancy office building in Manehattan.”

Bon Bon looked over at Lyra, half-grinning. “I think you might be forgetting that Town Hall is a government building.”

“So?” Lyra shrugged. “It’s the government building where all the fun stuff happens. I just think it should feel like it, that’s all.”

“Alright, I get it,” Bon Bon said. “Who knows? Maybe I’ll mention it to the Mayor next time I see her. I have to head in a few days from now, make sure some paperwork gets filed. …Come to think of it,” she added, glancing back into the kitchen, “I’m about out of confectioner’s sugar, too, and there’s a few other things I could stock up on. Sorry to drop this on you, Lyra, but could you watch the shop while I’m out?”

“No problem!” Lyra said, grinning. “Oh! Hey, what do I do if somepony orders in bulk?”

“They won’t,” Bon Bon said, standing up and stretching her back.

“Okay, but what if they do?” Lyra asked, looking over top of her notebook.

“Then say you’ll check with the head cook, write down what they want, and tell me when I get back,” Bon Bon said, trotting over to the door. “Oh, and if Big Mac comes by, tell him I delivered that cider barrel like he asked me to!”

Lyra cocked her head. “Wait, what cider barrel?”

“…The ‘get-well-soon’ cider, remember?” Bon Bon said, pausing with the door open. “For Lapis?”

“Oh,” Lyra said, her ears half-flopping back. “Yeah. That, right. Don’t worry, I’ll tell him!” she added, plastering a smile back onto her face.

“…He’ll be fine, Lyra,” Bon Bon said. “Remember what Zecora said? We’ll see him up and about any time now.”

“Well, yeah,” Lyra said, grimacing. “It’s just… well, my aunt had a Cascade once, and she was nervous about using her magic again for weeks. I just… I hope he’s okay, that’s all.”

“Me, too,” Bon Bon said, sighing. “We’ll just have to wait and see.”

Lyra sighed, then smiled again. “Let me know if you see him, okay?”

“Of course,” Bon Bon replied. “Back in a bit, Ly-Ly.”

“See you, BB,” Lyra replied, as Bon Bon stepped outside.

Bon Bon got about ten steps in the direction of the market streets, then stopped.

He’s just a private pony, she thought. He’s got perfectly good reasons. It would be uncalled-for to invade his privacy, especially while he’s unconscious. I can wait until he’s awake, and then ask him.

She’d been thinking the same things every time that Lapis was brought up. But, no matter how many times she’d thought them, there were too many strange things about the second-newest-pony in Ponyville to ignore.

His dogged refusal to meet, talk to, or even go near Pinkie Pie or her friends, for one thing. Lapis had provided almost half-a-dozen different reasons for his behavior, and a few of them were valid, but the others - especially the earlier ones - rang more and more hollow the more that Bon Bon considered them.

Then there were the odd gaps in his magical ability. From talking with Lyra, Bon Bon knew that Mend-All spells were especially nasty for most unicorns - not too taxing, if done right, but with a long, complex, and messy incantation that carried severe consequences if mis-recited. Lapis could cast them in an instant, multiple times a day, with no apparent ill effects beside fatigue - and yet, it had taken him weeks of living in Ponyville to learn any other spells, even a Hornlight. Not to mention that the next spell he’d learned was invisibility - why in the world would a repair-pony need to know an invisibility spell? It just didn’t add up.

Not to mention the secret basement. The smith’s workshop, Bon Bon could almost overlook. But not quite. There was too much scrap paper and metal down there for Lapis to have been using it only for making repairs, and besides, why had he been down there just after the Parasprite attack?

But the final straw, the one that niggled at her now, was the oldest of the bunch. When Lapis had first arrived in Ponyville, he’d stumbled over a few strange words - ‘everypony,’ ‘hooves,’ and a few others. Lapis had revealed he was raised by griffons, and Bon Bon had assumed that was the explanation. Bon Bon knew for a fact that the griffon dialect of Equish used ‘everygriffon’ and ‘claws’ in place of their Standard-Equish equivalents, and - as Lapis’ friend - she strongly doubted anything else could be the case.

But the pony who stood on the street, doubting her friend and her judgement, had two names. And Agent Sweetie Drops of S.M.I.L.E., the Secret Monster Intelligence League of Equestria, knew full well that there was another possible explanation. One that was beginning to make a disturbing amount of sense. And so, slowly, she turned down an alley, then set off at a brisk, businesslike trot toward the suspect’s place of residence.

…Sorry, Lapis.

But I can’t take the risk.

Applejack was halfway through nailing the doorway-joist for the new apple-cellar into place when the far end splintered and fell from the wall, the damaged end hitting the red brick of the floor first with a crackling bounce.

She didn’t swear; she was proud of that much. The Pink Lady orchards were right next to where the rest of the barn would be, and Pink Ladies were far too prim and proper to tolerate foul language - and far too sweet to risk souring their mood. But Applejack had to admit, as she looked at the jagged nub of torn wood that once had been a joist, that she was angry enough to swear at whatever carpenter-pony hadn’t thought to give that board a close enough inspection.

So, instead of swearing, Applejack huffed and clambered down the stepladder, tucking her ears back and craning her head down to inspect the damage. And sure enough, it was bad - the board might yet be useful for table legs, if she could find a sharp enough saw to rip-cut the broken portion off the rest of the beam, but she wasn’t making furniture yet. She was making a doorframe, and now, she’d need to find another board for it.

“Horseapples,” Applejack muttered, quietly enough that the Pink Ladies wouldn’t hear. Lumber wasn’t cheap in Ponyville - most of it came from the only group of ponies foolhardy enough to harvest it from the Everfree, and foolhardy as they were, they were too clever to do it for cheap. That meant she’d have to break down some spare apple-cart for lumber, and that was an hour-long project she’d rather not undertake just then. Consarn it, when’s Twilight gettin' here?

Applejack heard a familiar set of hoofsteps coming up behind her, and looked back to see Big Mac walking up to inspect the fence. At a glance, his face looked about as neutral as usual, but she knew her brother well enough to read that tightness around his eyes.

“Any ideas?” she asked, gesturing to the piece of scrap wood. “Ah was gonna leave it till Twilight shows up, and see if she can do something about it.”

Big Mac thought for a moment. Then - “Nope.”

“…Nothin’? Nothin’ at all?”

Big Mac shook his head. “Ah can’t splint it together mahself - that’d take too long, and I gotta finish truckin’ those support beams up the hill anyhow,” he explained, waving a hoof toward the bottom of the hill, where a large pile of large, sturdy wooden posts waited on a sled. “And Ah would call in the town’s repair-pony, but he’s not feelin’ too well just now.”

Applejack hesitated, her ears pricking up at the last few words. “Whoa, hold on now. Ponyville has a town repair-pony? Since when?”

“He moved in three days ‘fore Princess Luna returned,” Big Mac said, cocking an eyebrow. “Ah thought Ah’d told you about him already. He stopped that big pot o’ oatmeal from fallin’ on me while you were out in the Everfree, remember?”

The image of the enormous, town-sized pewter cooking pot that sat in a storeroom of Town Hall suddenly flashed through Applejack’s head, and her eyes went wide as she turned to face her brother. “When what-now almost fell on you?!”

Big Mac cocked an eyebrow, and after a moment’s pause, Applejack looked down at the ground. “Well, shoot. Ah guess Ah don’t remember, do Ah?”

“Nope.” Big Mac shrugged. “Although, it was plumb in the middle of apple-buckin’ season, so Ah s’pose you weren’t at your best when Ah mentioned it.”

“Huh,” Applejack said, her ears flopping back. “Darn it. Well, Ah’m sorry, Big Mac. Ah shoulda been payin’ better attention.”

“No harm done.”

Applejack smiled apologetically, then cleared her throat. “So, you said this feller helped you out back then? Y’all will have to tell me the details on that pot o’ oats, by the way. If Ah hear you almost got yerself hurt pullin’ some silly stunt again…”

“Anyway,” Big Mac said, and Applejack quickly hid her grin. Gettin’ Big Mac to talk ain’t hard, you just have to know how to go about doin’ it. “Like Ah said, he’s indisposed. From what Ah heard, which ain’t much, them para-sprites got to somethin’ pretty important of his an’ the shock of it did a number on him. He’s been out cold in Ponyville General for ‘bout a week now.”

“Gol-ly,” Applejack muttered. “An’ he’s the only repair-pony in town? He’ll be a busy feller when he wakes up, that’s for darn sure.”

“E-yup. Certainly seemed that way earlier that day,” Big Mac added, bending down to pick up the former beam.

“Hold on again,” Applejack said, her ears tucking back again as she raised a hoof to her forehead, Big Mac pausing as he put the scrap board on his back. “And just what do y’all mean by that?”

“Ah mean Ah’d just had him over here, the mornin’ before that mess with the para-sprites,” Big Mac said, cocking his eyebrow again. “…Though this time, Ah don’t think Ah’ve mentioned to you ‘fore now.”

“An’ you didn’ keep him over fer dinner?” Applejack asked, sighing as she started down the hill toward the sled of beams. “Big Mac, that’s no way to show hospitality to a pony what saved your hide! What would Granny Smith say?”

“Not much, seein’ as he’d just told the both of us the old house had rotten timbers,” Big Mac said as he trotted down alongside her, and Applejack winced. They both knew all about Granny Smith’s stubborn streak. “’Sides, he already had an appointment to keep. Somethin’ about a concert, if Ah recall.”

“So that’s how you knew the house wasn’t safe,” Applejack muttered. “Huh.”

“Fer what it’s worth,” Big Mac added, yoking himself to the sled of beams, “Ah was sure to get him the better of the two test-barrels of cider from this year’s batch. He wouldn’ accept any payment for the consultation, so Ah felt it was about right, both for compensation an’ for a get-well gift.”

“The tart one, or the spicy one?”

“The tart one. It’s still summer yet, an’ I figured it’d do as well as lemonade.”

“Huh. Well, Ah s’pose that’s all right then,” Applejack said, and they both grunted as they began to haul the sled up the hill. “Still, the next time he’s over here, he’s stayin’ for supper, busy or not.”

Big Mac rolled his eyes, but grinned. “E-yup.” And in very little time at all, they’d pulled the entire sled up the hill.

The archives of Town Hall were the epitome of the word “stuffy.” They were an old, slate-brick room buried below the rest of the building, at the bottom of a staircase that was almost apologetically hidden away behind the stage. There wasn’t a single ray of natural light in the whole of the long, narrow space, which was almost more like a hallway than a room.
Most of the archives were toward the middle of the room, and were made up of two rows of four shelves crammed full to bursting with bins of paperwork, loosely organized by date. The older papers were bound and kept on shelves against the walls, while the very oldest surviving were stored inside of separate folders inside of filing cabinets, at the very back of the room.

Mayor Mare absently hummed to herself as she sorted through one of these filing cabinets. She wasn’t sure what the song was, but somewhere, some crowd of ponies was surely singing it. That was how Heartsongs usually worked, after all.

Unfortunately, as much as she’d love to be in the middle of some musical number, there were some sheets of paper she was looking for. Some records, to be exact, as there was something troubling her about-

“Excuse me, Ms. Mayor?”

“Oh!” Mayor Mare yelped, turning to face the speaking pony. “Goodness, Twilight. You’re quiet on your hooves!”

“Oh my! I’m so sorry, I seem to have a knack for startling ponies lately,” Twilight said, smiling and half-tipping her ears back. “I just wanted to deliver that secondary damage report you asked me to compile. Is now a bad time?”

Mayor Mare shook her head. “No, not at all, Twilight. Go right ahead.”

“Right,” Twilight said, clearing her throat. “Here goes. ‘The magical event that resulted from the Parasprite Incident had a diameter of roughly 100 hooves, centered on Nutmeg Way and extending both vertically and horizontally. Within this hemisphere: all crooked teeth were forcibly straightened, all clouds were made into cubic formations of perfectly aligned axes, all lawns were mowed perfectly level, all fallen acorns’ positions were adjusted…”

Mayor Mare cocked her head. “Acorns? Those didn’t look affected to me…”

“Not to me at first, either,” Twilight said, smiling excitedly. “However, once I made a diagram of their locations relative to each other, I was able to determine that all their positions were consistent with intersections of the lines of a 1-inch square grid!”

“…You diagrammed… the acorns?”

“Mm-hm!” Twilight nodded, then continued reading through her report. “‘Most homes were re-organized, the Carousel Boutique being exempt. All rust, dust, and grime were forcibly expelled from their surfaces to distances as great as 150 to 200 hooves away, and all coat hair, mane hair, and feathers became as clean and tidy as if they were freshly washed, combed, and straightened, regardless of previous curliness, with the exception of flight feathers on pegasi. These effects persist, so far as I can tell, until all affected material has been shed and replaced.’”

Mayor Mare nodded along with the report, her bewilderment only increasing with every sentence, until Twilight reached her conclusion. “‘Based on this combination of effects, I believe the magical incident responsible to be a Magic Cascade of Harmonic frequencies, likely induced in a unicorn by the stress of the Parasprite invasion of Ponyville.’”

“A… magic cascade,” Mayor Mare said, mulling the phrase over in her head. “Like a waterfall, or…”

Twilight blinked, then her ears flopped back. “Oh. You don’t know what that is. Right, sorry.”

“No, it’s quite alright, Twilight,” Mayor Mare said, waving a hoof. “I’m glad to hear I picked the pony with the right information for the job. Could I trouble you to share the broad strokes?”

Twilight smiled, her ears rising a little. “I’d be delighted. Just give me a moment to compose my thoughts…” She shut her eyes, and Mayor Mare briefly glanced back into the filing cabinet. …Still no luck. Well.

“Alright, I think I’ve got it,” Twilight said, Mayor Mare turning her head to look. “So, when a unicorn casts a spell, there are certain emotions that can influence the results.” Twilight’s horn flickered as she spoke, and after a few seconds, a small, glowing orb appeared next to her head, moving in slow, controlled circles around her horn.

“Positive emotions, like joy, contentment, love, and so on, tend to make the results more potent, but still in line with what the spell is supposed to accomplish.” Then, Twilight shut her eyes for a second, a small, soft smile growing on her face, and the orb sped up in its orbit, its glow growing slightly brighter. “…For example, as you just saw, when I thought about some happy memories, this modified Hornlight spell was able to move faster and produce more light.”

“Other emotions, though, tend to have… varied results,” Twilight continued, and her brow furrowed for a moment - then, the magical ball flared with sudden light, its movement slowing to a crawl as its orbit suddenly grew wobbly. “…Frustration, for example, will increase power at a massive cost to stability, and an equally massive increase in difficulty.”

Twilight dismissed the spell, exhaling a quick breath, then opened her eyes and resumed speaking. “There are other emotional influences, of course. Boredom aids creativity, bewilderment is exactly as unhelpful as you think it is, but for this discussion, we need to worry about a few of the really tricky ones: worry, despair, and panic.”

Mayor Mare swallowed. “I take it you won’t be demonstrating their effects?”

“Not intentionally, and hopefully not anytime soon,” Twilight said, grimacing. “Any one on their own is bad enough, but when you end up mixing serious personal worry and despair together, then trying to shove them down and ignore them, you end up making a big, bottled-up cocktail of freak-out. And that cocktail, inside a unicorn, is a recipe for disaster.

“Take… well, me, for example. When I was a filly, I was really focused on my first magic exam,” Twilight continued. “I studied for it for days, and my worst fear, the entire time, was that I would fail. And once I got started on that exam, the worry just wouldn’t stop. I could barely cast any magic at all, and what I did cast was draining my reserves extra-quickly. So, naturally, I… failed.

Twilight sighed, her ears flopping back. “And that’s when the despair hit. Even back then, I knew trying to cast a spell on purpose right then would be a bad plan, so I tried to see myself out with some dignity - but then, well, some big boom went off, and it startled me.

“You remember how I described the worry and despair as ‘bottled up?’ Well, low magic reserves combined with a quick jolt of panic shakes that bottle. And, if it’s a hard enough shake, all that backed-up emotion will pop the cork and… well, kinda explode out.”

Mayor Mare nodded. “And that, combined with magic, is what happened to cause what you just described?”

“…Part of it,” Twilight said, shutting her eyes as her horn began to glow. “All the emotion meets whatever magic is left, and the entire mix gushes out, draining the unicorn of their strength and usually making them pass out: a Cascade. But, there’s another half to the equation.”

Twilight took a slow, deep breath, and slowly, an amethyst glow began to wrap around every box, every bound volume, every piece of paper in the room. Mayor Mare looked around, confused - then her jaw dropped as Twilight opened her eyes and began to straighten out the room. Crooked sheets of paper were re-aligned in their stacks, mis-filed documents floated briefly before Twilight’s face before they were put in their places, and books that were out of order made their way to their proper locations.

“This might surprise you,” Twilight said, her voice strained but her smile clear, “but I’m normally a very well-organized pony.”

“If I’m… left to shape all my own circumstances, I end up trying to create a perfectly-ordered environment. Everything in its place, everything according to schedule, with no misfilings, no interruptions. Perfect harmony.” The last sheet of paper snapped itself into alignment with the others in its stack, and Twilight released a tired breath. “Whoo. Haven’t done that in a while. Guess I’m a little rusty!”

“I might… be able to compensate you, should you want to change that,” Mayor Mare croaked, looking around at the newly-sorted basement.

“We’ll discuss my going rates later.” Twilight cleared her throat. “At any rate. The thing is, when I’m left to create that environment for a really, really long time, like when I was studying for that test, I start to find it… stifling. I want a way out, a break, some freedom to do something that isn’t scheduled, to get off the rails that might well lead to failure. I want a little bit of chaos.” And as she spoke, in one sheaf of paperwork on the shelf, a single piece of paperwork rotated itself by a few degrees - not much, but just enough for the corners to stick out.

Twilight glanced at the sheaf of papers and cocked an eyebrow, then re-aligned the loose paper with a sharp tug. “Not that much.”

She cleared her throat, then continued. “Magic tries to fulfill the desires of the unicorn using it. So, when I had a Cascade at my test, it ended up creating some pretty random results. I made the judges float, I turned my parents into potted plants, I grew Spike to the size of a tower… you get it. That is what we’d call a Discordant Cascade, magic that is given no instructions but to spice things up a little, and then set loose.

“And the opposite of that… would be what happens if a pony who’s used to leading a varied, chaotic life is finding it to be the bane of their existence. A pony who can usually improvise their way through things, getting forced to improvise for too long, until they feel like everything is spiraling out of control, like they can’t see any kind of order in the world. When their magic gets loose, it knows that the unicorn wants to make some sense of their situation, to feel like everything is under control, in harmony. That everything will be okay. So, it tries its best.

“We call that a Harmonic Cascade, and it tends to take harmony to unwelcome extremes, until the specifics and degrees of organization are just as bad as chaos. As far as I can tell, that’s what happened here,” Twilight finished, taking a deep breath. “And that’s pretty much the entire lecture I attended on Cascades. …Sorry, that got a little personal near the end there. Does it help any?”

“I… think so,” the Mayor said. “Just to be clear, though… these ‘Cascades’ can happen if any sufficiently stressed unicorn loses their composure?”

Twilight shook her head. “Not quite. It’s only really possible for unicorns with repositiories of 567 thaums or more… uh, I mean,” she added, watching the Mayor’s brow contort in confusion, “only unicorns with a certain degree of magical power. About 16 percent, or… four of every twenty-five unicorns are at risk, because if you have a lower power level than that, then you can’t have a low tank while having enough mana to support the waves of a Cascade.”

Mayor Mare nodded. “I see. And why hasn’t this happened in Ponyville before?”

“Well, it’s pretty rare for most ponies to build up the emotional mix that produces a Cascade,” Twilight said. “I’ve read that it’s a lot more common for unicorns that travel abroad, especially to places that aren’t as… stable as central Equestria. But still, you usually need weeks of serious personal worry to build up that kind of emotional backlog, and in Ponyville, most of my problems don’t last longer than a few days. …Except for current events, anyway.” Twilight added.

“Yes. Helping Applejack reconstruct her barn, was it?” Mayor Mare asked. “Unless you have anything else to add…”

“Oh, no. Not unless you had anything else to ask, anyway,” Twilight said, turning to the door.”

“No, I think I have a much clearer grasp of Cascades now, thank you, Twilight.”

“Alright then!” Twilight headed out the door. “See you next festival!”

“Hopefully!” Mayor Mare called back. Then she turned back toward the filing cabinet, shaking her head in amusement. I suppose there has to be some trade-off for magic. Unicorns get it, and the rest of us ponies get to have mental breakdowns in the privacy of our own homes without making it anypony else’s problem.

Still, as magical disasters go… well, I’ve certainly seen worse. Mayor Mare pulled open the filing cabinet with a hoof, relishing the fresh perfection of its organization - and stopped, confused. The documents she was searching for, which by all rights should have dated back nearly to the founding of Ponyville, were simply missing.

Mayor Mare had made the discovery during re-filing day, about a week before. She’d doubted it, however, and that’s what had driven her into the archives today - checking not just recent documentation, but even the very oldest files in Town Hall. And both her checks and her double-checks had confirmed her suspicions:

The Red Repair Shop, home to one Lapis Print, did not have blueprints on file with the Town Hall. Nor did it have records of any of the previous owners - where those files should have been, there instead sat narrow, deep slivers of empty space in the shelves and drawers, as clean and precise as cuts in a pinata.

Agent Sweetie Drops began to sweep Lapis Print’s house, and immediately suppressed the tingle of dread that began to rise in her gut.

The place had barely been touched since Lapis was inside it last. There were still pigeon feathers on the floor, from where Sweetie Drops wasn’t sure - some shifted in the breeze as she moved through the building, but others remained still, in the grid pattern that Lapis’ magic had left it in, along with the half a doorknob that had fallen from the door.

Besides that, though, the building was in eerily good condition. There was no dust or grime on the counters, no motes swirling through the air beside the yellow-tinted window. She felt a twinge of guilt as she spotted the rug that she and Lyra had brought, which was as clean and fluffy as if it were brand-new. The painting of the mustached griffon was there, too - it hung perfectly straight on the wall, smirking at Sweetie Drops without blinking.

Maybe it was just because of the spell’s aftermath, or maybe it was because she had some doubts. But somehow, even though Agent Sweetie Drops knew there was nopony inside, this house didn’t feel vacant.

The problem was, it didn’t necessarily feel like there was anypony inside, either.

Sweetie Drops didn’t close the main door behind her as she made her way through the living room, and into the hallway that led to the other rooms of the building. The obsessive organization persisted as she investigated - the cookware in its drawers was all perfectly stacked atop itself, the blankets on the guest bed were stretched taut across the level mattress, and even in Lapis’ own bedroom, the pillows were right at the center of the headboard - even though Lapis preferred to sleep off to the right side, if the shallow dip in his mattress was anything to judge by.

But the organization was far from the only thing that unnerved her, as she checked the building’s closets, its nooks and crannies and crevices. Every pony she’d ever met, including herself, had amassed more stuff than they knew what to do with over the course of their life. Hay, she still had a box of foals’ cookbooks left over from old birthdays, along with a few other boxes of junk that she didn’t use enough to take out of the closet.

Lapis didn’t have those boxes. He had no mementos or keepsakes, no mess. His home was far from Spurtan, he’d seen to that much with his furniture, but there wasn’t enough depth to it. Yes, Lapis had only just moved in, but as Sweetie Drops looked around the building, she began to feel as if she weren’t inside of anypony’s home at all - only inside a cheap imitation of a home.

She kept her ears pricked up as she approached the closet behind Lapis’ counter, the sound of her hoofsteps seeming deafening on the wooden floor. Slowly, carefully, she stepped inside and pulled the door partway shut behind her, then she attempted to open the secret door. Something wooden thunked against itself beneath her hooves, and Sweetie Drops grimaced. Whatever locking mechanism this is, it’s locked down good. No way I’m breaking it without busting up the floorboards, or something else.

So, with rising unease, she shut the closet door the rest of the way, then pulled the secret door open and descended the stairs into the secret basement.

Even here, Lapis’ house found new ways to unnerve her. This was the only room in the building that the Parasprites had gotten into, and Sweetie Drops could see it everywhere she looked - anything they could sink their teeth into, they had, and their crescent-shaped, serrated bite marks were visible on every piece of wreckage on the floor. But only some of that wreckage was scattered, in the places where she and Lyra had trampled through it - the rest was still sitting in those strange spiral patterns that came together at the place where Lapis had collapsed, tracing ever-widening lines to every wall.

Still, a lot of that wreckage had writing on it, or else handles. That made it mess, and that brought Sweetie Drops a little bit of relief - this space, at least, was a home, not just a space somepony lived in. Looking around the room in greater detail brought her greater relief, at least at first - she’d been suspecting this room would show signs of recent construction, and aside from some fresh wear on patches of the room’s walls, this place looked as if it had been built alongside the rest of the house.

When Sweetie Drops moved on to the workbench, though, she found cause for concern. There were three books there - one, the most heavily-chewed of the bunch, was mostly blank. There were a few pages near the front that detailed a drawing of some strange contraption, and a few more that looked like… pages copied down from a spellbook, though she wasn’t really sure. She cocked an eyebrow at the page labeled Shape-Shifting, filing that piece of information away for later.

The next book, bound in blue tape that was painted with yellow stars, was definitely a spellbook. Sweetie Drops recognized the title page - it was a copy of Magic 4 Dummies, though a very old and… strangely concealed one. She cocked her eyebrow at the hastily-scribbled, off-center label on the front cover: The Great and Powerful Trixie’s Tome of Untold Magical Secrets.

The final book… perplexed her. The parasprites had taken a strange approach to eating it, preferring to somehow scrape the words off the pages instead of biting through whatever material the cover was made of. This book, too, was full of odd diagrams, accompanied by half-eaten paragraphs of jargon that she couldn’t be bothered to parse.

Bon Bon eventually closed the book, then sat back on her rump with a relieved sigh. What she’d been afraid of finding was written notes on a different subject - other ponies, especially with a focus on their habits, mannerisms, and routines. But, as unsettling as poking through Lapis’ house had been, it seemed like her suspicions were unfounded.

And, she thought as she ascended the basement stairs, the shape-shifting spell didn’t fit either. They already know how to disguise themselves, they don’t need pony knowledge on the subject…

Bon Bon lost her train of thought as she reached the top of the stairs, and saw the hatch that led into Lapis’ attic. She hadn’t checked there yet - but, now that she saw the hatch, she remembered Lapis saying something about there being a magical charging array up there.

Frowning, she closed the secret door and opened the closet, then stared up at the hatch. I’ve never seen a charging array up close before… and besides, I should probably check up there anyway, even though there’s probably nothing else there.

Bon Bon briefly glanced around, making sure nopony was peering in through the windows - then she pulled open the attic hatch, grabbed one of the magic lanterns off the walls, and ascended the ladder into darkness.

The charging array was practically on display in the middle of the room, whirring and clinking away from its brackets against the chimney. Bon Bon stepped over to take a closer look, tracing one especially thick copper rod that connected to the ceiling - and gasped, her eyes shooting wide open as she spotted the place where roof and rod met.

“There you go, little bird,” Fluttershy murmured, smiling as she nosed a small plate of birdseed across the end-table. “How’s your wing? Feeling better yet?”

“Some,” cooed the pigeon on her table, glancing briefly at the birdseed. They were inside her cottage, near the edge of the village and the Everfree Forest. It was sunny outside, but Fluttershy had the curtains drawn - she was taking care of a mole with some broken claws, and she didn’t want the sun to get in his eyes, no more than she wanted this pigeon trying to fly on a sprained wing.

Still, the pigeon wanted to fly soon, and Fluttershy didn’t blame her - her cottage was cozy, but it wasn’t roomy, and it certainly didn’t have the space to let a pigeon spread her wings and fly. Rainbow Dash managed to fly when she came to visit, but not without knocking Fluttershy’s plants off their shelves. Fluttershy had told the pigeon all about it, but she still half-expected the poor thing to try flying anyway.

“So, are you going to tell me how you hurt your wing?” Fluttershy asked, smiling. “It might help me get you better sooner…”

The pigeon shot her a glare to rival a frustrated Applejack. “No. Please stop asking.”

Fluttershy considered forcing the issue, but eventually decided against it. “Well, alright,” she sighed. “If you change your mind, just let me know, Nikki.”

“I won’t.” Nikki started pecking at the birdseed, and Fluttershy turned away, humming to herself as she started mixing a batch of medicine for a family of squirrels. Nikki had been brought to her cottage by Lyra, not too long after the Parasprites had attacked. Fluttershy had been doing her best to clean up after the mess, but she wasn’t quite done yet… well, she wasn’t really done at all. Most of her cabinets were still a mess, and half the food was completely gone - but at least Rainbow Dash had sucked all the Parasprites out with her tornado before they’d started eating everything but food. Hopefully Twilight’s spell has worn off by now… gosh, I hope they’re all okay.

“You know, Nikki, I don’t think I’ve ever met a pigeon with a name like yours,” Fluttershy said, as she carefully nudged a small glass jar out of a cabinet and onto her back. “Are you visiting Ponyville from somewhere?”

“No,” Nikki muttered, shoving a sunflower seed into her beak. “A friend gave it to me-” She cut herself off mid-trill, looking distinctly annoyed with herself.

Aww… “Oh, that’s wonderful,” Fluttershy said, smiling over at the self-conscious pigeon. “Are you somepony’s pet pigeon?”

“No!” Nikki squawked. “And he didn’t name me, either - he started calling me Nikki, but I’m the one who decided to keep it.”

“Oh, I see,” Fluttershy said, giggling. “I’m sorry.”

Birds are so cute when they’re just flown the nest, she thought. They always want to look so independent.

“So who is this pony?” Fluttershy asked, as she started stirring the medicine together. “I’m sure they’ll want to know that you’re feeling better.”

Nikki winced, and Fluttershy thought she saw worry in her eyes. “Please stop.”

Fluttershy paused, wanting to ask whether the other pony was alright. But as Nikki pecked at the birdseed, something in her face told Fluttershy that pushing wouldn’t get her any answers. “Well, okay.”

For a few moments, they didn’t talk, Fluttershy humming to herself again as she finished mixing the medicine for the squirrels. Nikki didn’t pipe up, either, busying herself with pecking at the birdseed.

“He fixed my nest,” Nikki eventually chirped.

Fluttershy blinked. “The pony who started calling you Nikki?”

Nikki nodded. “He’d come over to put a roof back together. My nest - my scrape, more like - was up there. I’d made it in five seconds the night before. I could make another one just as fast. He could’ve gotten rid of it even quicker.”

“And he didn’t?” Fluttershy asked.

“No. He tried to shore it up.” Nikki smirked. “Just made a mess instead. But you pay back your favors. I stuck around until I got a chance to, and he paid me back, and I paid him back…” She absently waved a wing. “It went on. I guess we’re friends now.”

“That’s wonderful,” Fluttershy said, smiling. She slung a pair of saddlebags over her back, tucking the medicine inside. “He sounds like a good friend to have. …Is he alright?”

Nikki’s smirk faded, and that look returned to her face. “I hope so.”

Fluttershy blinked, but before she got the chance to say anything, the window burst open, and another pigeon swooped inside. “Boss! He’s up!”

“…Boss?” Fluttershy asked, bewildered, but Nikki was already on her feet, brushing birdseed crumbs off her beak. “For how long?”

“Just a minute or two, Boss,” the new pigeon replied. “The zebra came and started talkin’ to ‘im soon as he sat up.”

Nikki nodded, then cracked her neck. “Teach him to scare me… I can fly there. Show me.”

“Oh, goodness,” Fluttershy said, as Nikki approached the window. “That wing might still be sprained, please be careful-”

Nikki crouched, spreading her wings - then took to the air, straining from the effort but still flying. Fluttershy watched, helpless, as Nikki fluttered uncertainly for a moment, then shot out the window after the other pigeon, cooing no more goodbye than a “Thanks,” over her wing.

"Oh my goodness," Fluttershy mumbled again. Then, carefully, she closed the window again, drawing the curtains and glancing over at the mole in his box. He hadn’t woken up, so Fluttershy turned and headed for the door.

Well, at least I’m not the only pony in Ponyville that talks to animals, she thought. And it’s nice that Nikki is concerned for him.

Gosh, I hope he’s okay.

Lapis hadn’t been talking with Zecora for very long, but he was finding the zebra to be surprisingly good conversation.

Sure, the rhyming was a little hard to get used to, and sometimes he had to think for a second to figure out what she was saying through the accent, but to his surprise, they had more than a little in common. She was far from home too, as it turned out - Lapis didn’t share the details of his situation with her, but he did mention that he was from afar, and that he didn’t plan on staying in Ponyville permanently. Zecora had shared that she hailed from Farasi, a nation that was overseas from Equestria. She’d left her home in search of new discoveries, and was finding the Everfree to be full of exotic ingredients for potion-brewing, as well as a few other oddities.

“Oddities?” Lapis asked, cocking his head. “Are we talking wildlife, or magic, or what?”

Zecora smiled. “Both the wildlife and the magic are strange, it is true. But the strangest of all, was not mentioned by you. Many old places wait below the canopy, many ancient ruins - only some explored by me.

“I have found and read through a few old inscriptions, and from them have gleaned most intriguing descriptions. The Forest Everfree was once the heart of this nation, before the Princess of the Moon fell to fear’s cold temptation. There is a castle within the Princesses called home, where they ruled over this land from atop twin thrones. It is where your pursuers found the Elements of Harmony, and of yet more ancient powers, signs are now clear to me. I am sure that more secrets await inside, though deep enough to find them, I have not pried.”

“Huh,” Lapis muttered. “About how deep in the forest are we talking, here?”

Zecora blinked, her ears cocking forward. “From the edge of the wood, it is four hours’ trot. Of joining my search, do you perhaps have a thought?”

Lapis blanched. “Not if it’s an eight-hour round trip, I don’t. I’m already a week behind on my work, I can’t afford to take any more days off anytime soon. …Especially if the Everfree still has as many big animals as it did the last time I went in there,” he added.

Zecora cocked an eyebrow. “There are still many monsters in the forest to rue. But the Everfree Forest, it is not new to you?”

“Yeah,” Lapis said, wincing. “I… kinda reached Ponyville after traveling through a part of it. Had an encounter with a Manticore, but I made it out alright. Just barely, though.”

A memory flashed through his head, of waking up on a dirt path in an unfamiliar forest, and staggering onto his hooves to take his first slow, clumsy steps in Equestria. “It was a learning experience, I’ll say that much. Anyway, I’ll need some real equipment if I want to go poking around in there again, and even then, it won’t happen until I’m all caught up.”

Zecora nodded, but she seemed confused. “…I fear on your privacy, I must intrude. Yet I find I must take the chance to be rude. Are you drawn to the search only by the mystique, or is there something else in the ruins that you mean to seek?”

“You know how I said I was from a long way out?” Lapis muttered. “Yeah, it’s far enough out that it isn’t on any maps in the village. Still, if I’m lucky - which I don’t think I am - maybe some older records might point me in the right direction.”

What is Equestria in relation to Earth, anyway? Lapis’ initial belief was that he’d somehow gotten trapped in a TV show, but a few days spent living life here had convinced him otherwise - Ponyville seemed, as far as he could tell, like a genuine small town, though one populated by tie-dye equines. So far, the only theories that Lapis could come up with were that he was somehow in a random alternate dimension that happened to match the details of the TV show his little sister liked to watch, or that the TV show somehow existed because of the alternate dimension. Or maybe I’m just in a coma, but we’ll burn that bridge when we get to it.

Anyway. If Equestria was an alternate dimension, then that proved interdimensional travel was possible, just by virtue of the fact that he’d arrived here. That meant, at least in theory, that getting back home was definitely possible. And if the Ancient Civilizations here are just as super-advanced as most ancient civilizations are in the movies, then maybe - just maybe - there might be something for me to find inside those ruins.

“I see. It is a terrible thing, to be lost,” Zecora said, and Lapis blinked as he was snapped out of his thoughts. “But to think only of return… is too high of a cost. Are you sure you can’t find, in your present condition, some way to see good inside your situation?”

A shiver ran down Lapis’ spine. “Absolutely not. I’ve got to find a way back, and that’s final.”

“If you’re sure,” Zecora said. “…Then I’d advise you to finish the tea. It is a most ancient brew, made from shimmerberry.”

“The tea?” Lapis glanced over at his cup, and remembered suddenly that it had liquid inside of it - a transparent purple liquid, with an a sheen on its surface that was somewhere between oily and metallic. It was cold, now, but he took a drink anyway - even cold, it wasn’t half bad. “…Huh. ‘Shimmerberry,’ you said?”

“An ancient fruit, which casters of magic found quite to their suit,” Zecora said. “Your magic reserves hold only so large a store, to which the opening this tea will widen yet more. To recover your magic, there is no safer brew - drink. Let it be my gift to you.”

“You don’t say,” Lapis muttered, grinning as he looked down at his mug. “This stuff isn’t too expensive, is it?”

Zecora chuckled. “You will find no difficulty in purchasing it. Though I stock my own mix, should you be willing to visit.”

Lapis nodded, then downed the rest of the mug. “You know, I think I might take you up on that offer. Though, I might end up needing some help to find your house.”

“If you do, I’d advise that you ask Twilight. She could guide you to me, I suspect, even in blackest night.” Zecora stood, then turned for the door. “And now, I fear my visit must come to an end, for I see you’ll be visited soon by another friend. Farewell, Lapis Print, and good luck to you. Come see me if ever you again need my brew.”

“Thanks, see you around!” Lapis called. Though if I gotta ask Twilight to find you, odds are good I’ll never see you again, he thought, as Zecora left the room.

…Wait. Visited by another friend?

Lapis frowned, then looked around the room, for any sign of another visitor - but no, the clean, sterile-white hospital room was empty besides himself. There was indeed a heart monitor next to him on the bed, connected to a strap of some kind on his foreleg rather than to a clip on his finger. Frowning, he glanced out the window, but saw only the edge of Ponyville, silhouetted by the setting sun - as well as Zecora stepping out of the building, and headed off toward the boundary of the Everfree Forest.

Ancient ruins, Lapis thought. Huh. Definitely a for-later project, then-

“Lapis Print!” a voice shouted.

Lapis gasped, turning to look at the speaker, then sat back in bed. “…Jeez, Bon Bon, calm down a little! I know I was out for a week, but you don’t need to yell… what’s wrong?”

Bon Bon was marching toward his bedside from the door to the room, and something about the cold, hard look on her face brought to mind how she’d switched into drill-sergeant mode on the night of the Summer Sun Celebration. She had a single saddlebag slung over the side of her back, and a glint in her eye that implied she was willing to get physical.

“You are,” she said, coming to a stop beside his bed and glaring down at him. “This has gone on too long, Lapis. No more excuses. No more secrets. Why won’t you go near the Element Bearers?”

Lapis frowned, his heart starting to speed up. “The what? …Oh. You mean Pinkie and her friends. Look, I don’t know what you’re talking about when it comes to excuses, everything I’ve told you about why I’m avoiding her is true-”

“Horseapples,” Bon Bon said, leaning forward and narrowing her eyes. “First it was that you could cast invisibility spells, then it was your basement workshop, and now it’s what I found in your attic.”

Lapis blinked. “My attic? Bon Bon, I checked up there already, there was nothing there but the charging array and some cobwebs. Also, ‘spells,’ plural, is definitely an exaggeration - I know one invisibility spell, I cast it once, and for my troubles I got a headache for two hours. And as far as the basement workshop goes - well, let me put it this way, Bon Bon. I want you to say, to my face, that if you found a secret room in your house, you would tell everyone about it.”

His words didn’t seem to quell Bon Bon’s sudden suspicion, as her ears only tucked back further on her head. She straightened up beside his bed and spoke. “Lapis, because I believe there is a tiny, miniscule chance you are telling the truth right now, I am going to be perfectly honest with you. I have sufficient grounds to arrest you on suspicion of espionage, foalnapping, and treason. What you say to me in the next ten minutes is going to determine whether you spend the night here in this hospital bed, or inside of a cell.”

“Bon Bon, wha-” Lapis began, his heart racing, but Bon Bon cut him off with a stomp of her hoof. “Nopony - nopony - puts that much effort into avoiding a party, no matter how antisocial they are. Why are you so against having a party at your house? Why won’t you go near the Element Bearers, and why are you studying every spell you can find that will help you disguise yourself and evade pursuers?! Why won’t you stop running from Pinkie Pie-”

“Because I CAN’T!” Lapis shouted. “I just… I can’t, okay? Why is this so hard to accept, what part of the word ‘no’ isn’t making sense to you?! Go ahead, you can tell me - is it the ‘N,’ or the ‘O?’”

“It’s the part where you arrived in Ponyville three days before the last Element Bearer did,” Bon Bon said, her voice icy cold, “and managed to get your hooves on the one book that would help her find the Elements of Harmony. It’s also the part where you knew what book to grab to use the tools in your ‘discovered’ secret basement, even before you arrived there. Or how about the part where repeatedly push yourself to the brink of collapse, to the point of having a magic mental breakdown, working on something in your basement while the rest of Ponyville is fighting off a swarm of house-eating bugs?” She put her hoof down again. “There are too many coincidences about you, Lapis, and they don’t line up. What are you hiding? Who the hay are you, and why are you running?”

“Because of my family!” Lapis shouted, and he felt something inside himself snap as he said it. “It’s… my family, okay? They trusted me, I messed up, and now I’m fixing it.”

Bon Bon blinked, then sat back, her gaze still suspicious. “Keep talking.”

“Why should I?” Lapis snapped. “What’s your problem, what’s going on?”

“The kind that will land you in prison if you don’t. Keep. Talking.” Bon Bon replied.

Lapis sighed, resting his head on his hoof. Okay. I’ve gotta tell her something. The human thing is off the table, that’d just make me sound crazy. Same for the show thing. I don’t think I could predict Bon Bon’s future, and I could only predict… maybe some major events here? And even then, she still wouldn’t have reason to believe me until after they happened.

“…You know what?” Lapis asked. “Fine. Sure. But remember, you asked for this, okay? You knowing about this is your fault.”

“Where I grew up, it’s called… A-mare-ica, and things aren’t great there. We have plenty of food, but a lot of us don’t have enough money to go around, and that means a lot of folks go hungry, for the crime of not being lucky enough. Take that, add disease, war, summers getting hotter and winters getting colder, and you’re halfway there.”

“I’ve never heard of it,” Bon Bon said, her eyes narrowing.

“Yeah, and you won’t find it on any maps, either,” Lapis said. “Believe me, I checked. That’s the problem. But I’ll get there in a second.

“My family was lucky enough, but not by much. I wanted to fix that. I wanted to get some higher education, get a high-paying engineering job, pull us up to someplace better. For that, I needed money that I didn’t have, so I took out a loan. But my signature on it wasn’t enough, because if something ever happened to me, the loan company still wanted some way of getting their money. They wanted another signature, and…

Lapis sighed. “My parents signed.”

“They knew they couldn’t pay that debt. I knew they couldn’t pay that debt, and they knew I knew, too. But they signed anyway, because they trusted me.

“So I got the loan, and I studied. For two years. And then… there was some kind of accident. I don’t know how or why it happened. One second, I was inside the Sciences Library, and the next I was waking up on some dirt road in the middle of the Everfree Forest. I found my way out, I saw a village, and that’s how I got to Ponyville.”

Lapis didn’t mention his reaction upon waking up. He didn’t mention how he’d looked down at where his hands had been, and seen hooves there instead. He didn’t mention the way his stomach had lurched when he’d looked along the length of his foreleg and realized all of his joints were backwards, following his new fur all the way onto his torso.

He didn’t mention how he’d just gone numb for a second, after looking down the length of his own furred, barrel-shaped back from above.

“I could fix stuff. The Mayor saw after I bumped into her, and fixed her glasses. She practically threw the repair-pony job at me. I wasn’t sure, but then I realized something.

“Back home, back in Amareica? My family probably thinks I’m dead. And so does the loan company. I know what my parents make, and it’s not enough to pay those sharks off for long. If I didn’t get myself back there, fast, I’d be putting my own family out on the streets.

“I can’t stay here. But I had to get my bearings, I had to get a steady source of food and water, and I had to find a way back home. So I took the job, I did the best I could do, and when I found a book on magic engineering, or ‘artifice,’ or whatever you want to call it, I started tinkering in my secret basement,” Lapis said, sitting back in his bed. “And the one thing I’ve put together literally blew up in my face the morning before the Parasprites arrived. That’s who I am. That’s why I was in my basement. That’s why I’m here now. You happy?”

He glanced over, and saw that Bon Bon’s expression was… odd. She looked either conflicted, or concerned… or constipated, maybe?

“But… what about Pinkie?” she asked. “That still doesn’t explain why you’re so desperate to avoid her.”

No, it doesn’t. Lapis sighed and leaned back into his pillow, shutting his eyes and trying to think of something. And then an idea came to him.

It wasn’t the whole truth. But - with some shock - Lapis realized it was a part of the truth, a big enough part that it hurt when he thought about it. And that made it better, at least marginally, than a lie.

“Bon Bon, Pinkie throws a party for every pony that comes to stay in Ponyville,” Lapis said.

“Yeah, she does. Why does that matter?”

“It matters,” Lapis sighed, “because I haven't come here to stay. I can’t stay here.” He swallowed, then continued.

“Look, you and Lyra, you’re right. I get it. I’ve done the math. The longer I evade Pinkie, the harder it’ll be to avoid her, and the bigger the eventual party will be. And you know what? I want to have that party. I want to take a second to catch my breath, to smile, laugh, joke around, meet more ponies, act like nothing’s wrong. I want to just have fun for a night, I want to be happy here. I want to stop.

“I can’t,” Lapis said, and he realized his voice was shaking. “Because it’s not Pinkie I’m running from.

“It’s guilt. For letting my parents sign those damn loans, for letting myself disappear, for not making things right yet. It’s a great big boulder of guilt, and it’s rolling downhill after me, and it’s faster and heavier than any job, any workload, any pony could ever be. And if I stop, if I even slow down, it will crush me.

“I can’t stop, Bon Bon.” And for some reason, Lapis’ throat was too tight, and he could barely get the words to come out louder than a whisper.

“But I’m getting so damn tired.”

He couldn’t meet Bon Bon’s eyes, so he kept his own closed, forcing his forehooves to stop shaking atop his blankets. “...Okay, you know what? It’s stupid, you don’t believe it, and honestly, I’m not sure why I said anything. Maybe it’s something in this tea, I don’t know. But it’s the truth. So, do you want me to trot to my cell, or are we gonna roll-”

Something soft, warm, and heavy wrapped around Lapis’ chest, squeezing gently around his body. Lapis frowned, then opened his eyes.

Bon Bon was hugging him. She’d done it awkwardly - he was still lying on his back on the bed, so she’d had to sort of worm her hooves underneath his torso. On top of that, a good half of her weight was on him, so he was finding it a little difficult to breathe.

But all the same, she was hugging him, and the last time Lapis had gotten a hug was when his parents had dropped him off at the end of winter break. He wrapped his own forelegs around her.

Eventually, they let go, and Bon Bon took a few steps away from the bed, grimacing again. “I… I’m sorry, Lapis. I didn’t know, and… I’m sorry.”

Lapis chuckled. “Bon Bon, I never told you. Honestly, if you had known, I’d be worried.”

“Well, yes. But still, I…” She sighed. “I found something in your house, Lapis, and I guess I overreacted a little bit.”

Lapis frowned. Found something? I don’t think I ever wrote down anything about Earth, or being human. “What do you mean?”

Bon Bon hesitated, then she reached into her saddlebag with a hoof and pulled something out. “Do you know what this is?”

Lapis leaned forward, peering down at the object in the center of Bon Bon’s hoof. For a moment, he was confused by the matte-black, almost burnt-looking lump of dark material, until he spotted the flecks of copper glinting in its surface. “…Some kind of artifice-compatible solder, I think. Whatever pony built the collection array used the stuff to weld the central copper rod to the roof. Why, does it matter?”

“Yes,” Bon Bon said. “Yes, it does. It’s not solder, it’s wax. And it’s made by a very secretive, very dangerous kind of shape-shifting monster. I found it, and I thought… that you were one of them.”

“A shape-shifting monster…” Lapis muttered, then - wincing at the pain in his horn - he levitated the chunk of wax off Bon Bon’s hoof, trying and failing to mush it around in his grip. “Well, it’s definitely harder than beeswax.”

Bon Bon scoffed, then actually giggled. “Unfortunately, yes. …Listen, I’d prefer not to talk about it too much, but if you find any more of this stuff, in Ponyville or anywhere else, then… come get me, as soon as you can, and be on your guard until you do. If you can do the job you were paid to do, then do it and get out, but be careful until you get to me. Just in case somepony around you turns out not to be a pony.”

Lapis chuckled nervously. “Bon Bon, what is this, Invasion of the Pony Snatchers?”

“Yes,” Bon Bon said, not a trace of humor in her voice. And suddenly, Lapis remembered one of the episodes. A two-parter, one his little sister had watched over and over again. The wedding, the princess and the royal guard, the succubus-bug-pony-thing with the green fire.

Princess Celestia, in a pod on the ceiling.

“…Right,” Lapis said, and suddenly the chunk of wax in his magical grip seemed a lot heavier than it had before. “I’ll keep an eye out.” Yeah, Bon Bon definitely isn’t just a cop.

“Thanks,” Bon Bon said. “I’ll be taking that wax back. I’ll need to show it to Lyra.”

“Sure thing,” Lapis said, giving her the wax. “…Hey, so, listen. Thanks for-” He paused, cutting off as he heard a tapping at the window.

Bon Bon frowned, looking over. “Huh. A pigeon. I don’t think that’s Nikki, though.”

Lapis opened the window, and the pigeon fluttered inside, then called out a quick coo. Frowning at the unfamiliar bird, Lapis looked back toward the window and smiled as he spotted Nikki winging her way toward them. “There she is! How’d you know I was-”

Nikki briefly tucked her wings in, swooping in through the window at top speed, then snapped her wing to its full length as she cruised toward Lapis’ face. He just had time to shut his eyes before the impact, and the force of Nikki’s maximum-force slap tipped him to the side just enough that he ended up falling out of bed.

“Ow,” Lapis muttered. Overhead, Bon Bon gaped, and Nikki pulled a tight banking turn to perch atop Lapis’ head, glaring down at him over the top of his horn. “Okay, yeah, I’ll try not to do that again.”

“…Poor Fluttershy,” Bon Bon muttered.

Nikki shot Bon Bon a look as Lapis climbed to his hooves. He was still a little shaky, probably from not getting out of bed for a week, but - to his pleased surprise - he felt up for a walk. “Alright, so I guess I’m out of bed now, and my backlog is waiting for me. What do you say we find out how I check out of here?”

“I don’t think-” Bon Bon began, but a sudden, loud beeping from the heart monitor next to Lapis’ bed cut her off. Lapis glanced down at his hoof, and found that the cable connecting the cuff on his foreleg to the heart monitor had been snapped in the fall.

A brief jolt of realization shot through Lapis, and he turned toward the door, from outside of which the sudden sound of galloping hooves was growing louder. “I’M OKAY!” he bellowed. “I’M NOT DYING, I JUST FELL OUT OF BED! SORRY!”

A sigh came from outside the door, and a white-coated mare with a pale pink mane and a nurse’s hat poked her head around the corner, a bright red bag that looked suspiciously full of defibrillators slung across her shoulders. “Thank you, sir. Please keep your voice down.”

“Right. Got it. Sorry again,” Lapis said.

The nurse briefly looked around the room, taking in both Nikki and the second pigeon now sitting atop Lapis’ headboard, then added, “And no pets, either.”

Nikki squawked, outraged. Bon Bon sighed and shook her head, and all Lapis could do was grin. He’d done it. He’d spilled part of the secret, and he hadn’t been ostracized or sent to any kind of secret lab. On top of that, thanks to Zecora’s chat, he might even have a new place to look for a way home. All in all, even with the week-long backlog, things couldn’t have turned out any better.

…Even if that boulder is just a little heavier now.

Author's Note

Patch Notes: Again, none. But this time I have a good reason, I promise - I'm looking through the chapters, trying to find any big formatting errors and patch them. I've squished a couple so far, but there's definitely still more to go.

Alrighty, so, for what it's worth, I did try to write this one a little on the funny side. But Lapis had to spill some beans, and I figured there would be some emotion attached to that, so here we are. Note the absence of Pinkie Pie in this chapter: I think this is the first single-part chapter where she hasn't made at least a brief appearance.

Also, in this chapter, I did something I never expected to do for a story: I made a bell curve. And no, I'm not sharing it. My insanity is a curse, and I refuse to pass it on to any of you. Suffice to say, the numbers that Twilight threw at Mayor Mare weren't nearly as random as you might otherwise think they were. It's only an internal reference, as the specifics of unicorns' innate capacities for magical power will probably never matter for story purposes (unless at some point I want to make an unfunnily long and contrived over-9000 joke about Celestia, in which case they'll get very important very quickly.)

And finally, about which of the Mane 6 did/n't make an appearance in this chapter. I opted to cover the most immediate, present-tense threats to Lapis' secrecy, aside from those already introduced. That leaves Rainbow and Rarity unaccounted for, save for a couple details mentioned in Twilight's un-damage report: one cloud with some suspicious right angles, and one building spared from the OCD-ing.

...Oh, and maybe one other little thing earlier in the story.

See you in the next one!

8: C'mon Over Now, Ya Hear?

It was sunset, and the edges of the clouds were just beginning to turn gold. At the far end of the sky from the sun, a few stars were beginning to dully gleam through the deep, rich indigo-blue of the sky, just above the low, rolling hills of the plains around Ponyville. A steady, cool breeze was rolling over those hills and into the village, washing over the grass in slow, rippling waves. It set the dark, narrow leaves of the nearby trees swaying, and seemed almost to softly whisper as Lapis, Nikki, and Bon Bon made their way along the road that connected Ponyville General Hospital to the rest of the village.

“…Listen, for real,” Lapis said, as he slowly trudged around a bend, “I’m fine. And I’m not going to do any work once I get back, either - at most, I’m finding a doorstop, tidying up a little, and getting to bed.”

Bon Bon smirked. “Forgive me for not taking you at your word, Lapis. But I’m walking you home, then I’m bringing over Lyra and some chow. Lyra wouldn’t talk to me for weeks if I did anything less, and besides, I’m sure she’s got her own questions to ask.”

“Guess I can’t argue with that,” Lapis replied, and he felt his ears briefly flick backwards atop his head. He straightened them, then asked, “Anything interesting happen while I was out?”

Bon Bon shook her head. “Not much. Mayor Mare gave an official speech about the Parasprites- sorry, the bug-things that tore up the village.” She sighed. “Apparently Fluttershy of all ponies led one here from the Everfree, and it multiplied.”

Lapis cocked an eyebrow. “The Everfree? Wait, if they live in there normally, how come the whole forest isn’t just stumps by now?”

“Well, normally they only eat crops, berries, or other things you or I could eat,” Bon Bon said, “but then Twilight cast a spell to make them stop eating all the food, and it worked.”

“That figures,” Lapis said, nodding. “I can almost see how Fluttershy might’ve thought they were fine - before they started eating everything, they were almost cute.”

“Maybe,” Bon Bon said. “Anyway, it was Pinkie Pie who managed to lead them away. Apparently, on top of being Pinkie Pie, she’s also a one-pony band.”

“You know, if I hadn’t seen her in action, I’d be pretty confused right now,” Lapis said. “Though I’m pretty sure ‘be a one-pony band’ is just one more part of the job description for Pinkie Pie.”

“She went by you?” Bon Bon asked.

“Well, she passed by the end of the road I was on, and that was close enough for the bugs to follow after her.” Lapis remembered the odd look on Pinkie’s face, and cocked his head. “You know, I don’t think I’ve ever seen Pinkie that pi- uh, cheesed off before.”

“Lapis, you’re not hiding your home country from me anymore, you can use your native curses,” Bon Bon said, rolling her eyes. “But yeah, she wasn’t too happy. I’ve seen worse, though.”

“When?” Lapis asked, glancing over.

Bon Bon shuddered. “Word of advice: if you ever make a Pinkie Promise, then never, ever break it. You think she’s been chasing you so far? If you break a Pinkie Promise, then she knows, and she will find you.”

“…Good to know,” Lapis said, filing that piece of information away for later.

They reached Lapis’ house not long afterward. Nikki settled down on the table for a nap, while Bon Bon quickly excused herself to go get Lyra - leaving Lapis to take in what he’d done to his house.

Bon Bon had shared some of the details of Lapis’ magical… accident with him, but this was the first time he’d actually seen any of it. Outside of the basement, everything really seemed to be in a grid pattern - even the fallen pigeon feathers that still littered his living room floor, until he swept them up.

His kitchen was neater than he’d ever gotten it, and all the dishes were sparkling clean. His bed was so tightly made that he suspected the blankets might tear if he jumped on them - not that he was feeling energetic enough to do so - and even the guest bedroom seemed not to have a speck of dust inside. Almost wish I could do that on purpose…

Lapis remembered the feeling of being choked, held aloft in the air by his own magic, the fiery, pulsing pressure that had seemed to tear his head in two by the horn. He shivered. Actually, no thanks.

Taking one look at the site of the incident was more than enough to reinforce his reluctance. It was still chaos in his basement, but now, it was sculpted chaos - the spirals drew wide, smoothly-curving arcs of gathered wreckage from the spot where he’d collapsed to the very edges of the room, leaving the floor almost bare everywhere else.

With a spike of toothache-like pain from his horn, Lapis picked up one of the broken hammers off the floor. Like all the rest of his tools, the Parasprites had eaten it in half - and not in the “just-the-handle” or “just-the-head” sense, either. No, they’d chomped along it in a straight, tooth-marked line from the handle to the tip, as if the hammer was an unusually useful cob of corn.

Lapis wasn’t sure it was worth hanging it back up, but he hooked it onto the tool rack anyway. He was starting to consider picking up the scrap paper, but the second he decided to just get it over with, he heard his door swinging open upstairs. “Lapis?” Lyra’s voice called.

“On my way up,” he replied, and he was halfway up the stairs when the reverberating sound of the door’s locking mechanism echoed down to him. He winced; it sounded like she’d rammed into the door full-speed.

“You alright up there?” he called, ascending the rest of the way into the closet and closing the false wall behind him. “Sounded like you hit that door pretty hard-”

He pushed open the door again, and was only out by a few steps before Lyra tackled him into a hug, almost crushing the air out of his lungs. “Whoa! Hey, nice to see you too.”

From the door, Bon Bon rolled her eyes and smirked, setting down a carry-out bag atop Lapis’ table. Lyra let go after a second or two, her ears flopping back on her head. “Sorry, Bon Bon filled me in a little on the way here, and… well, I had no idea, and… I guess, I’m glad you’re okay, but are you sure you’re okay?”

“…I’m feeling about as good as I can, Lyra,” Lapis replied, trying to plaster on a reassuring smile. “It’s a mess, but at least I’m out of the hospital, and I can start cleaning it up-”

“Tomorrow,” Bon Bon said, while Nikki opened one eye long enough to shoot him a glare that basically said the same thing. “Right now, you’re doing nothing but eating, and explaining to Lyra whatever the hay she asks you to explain.”

Lyra perked right up at the mention of food. “Ooh! Does that mean we can crack into that barrel of cider?”

“What barrel of…” Lapis started asking, but at the sight of the barrel sitting on top of his counter, he cut himself off. “Uh, did you bring this here?”

“It’s a test batch of cider, from the Apple family,” Bon Bon said. “Big Macintosh and I were talking the other day, and you came up. I know he’s Applejack’s brother, and Applejack is one of Pinkie’s friends, but…”

“Don’t worry about it,” Lapis said, looking over the barrel for a spigot - it was on the inside of the counter, as it turned out. “I’d be happy to share, I just don’t know if I have enough cups…”

It turned out, Lapis did not have enough cups. Lyra got a glass, but Bon Bon was shortly holding a coffee mug, and Lapis eventually wound up grabbing a small bowl from his cabinet and filling it from the tap. The cider was a little bit sour, but Lapis didn’t mind - it was still the best he’d ever tasted, and the tartness paired well with the spicy hay dogs that Bon Bon had brought over.

“So,” Bon Bon said, picking up her hay dog for a second bite, “is there anything you wanted to ask Lapis, Lyra… Lyra?”

Lapis swallowed, then looked up from his food - to find Lyra busy chugging her cider at top speed, her barely-nibbled hay dog floating in the air beside her wide and teary eyes. “Whoa, slow down there, you’ll grow gills!”

Lyra drained the last few drops from her glass, then set it down, blinking away the tears in her eyes. “Whatever you do, don’t try the Happy Sauce,” she wheezed, setting the hay dog down on the table in its wrapper and heading for the cider barrel at half a gallop, the empty glass floating away after her.

Lapis and Bon Bon exchanged a glance, then took a closer look at Lyra’s hot dog. There was a thin trail of some condiment drizzled across the top layer of cheese, one that had a clearer oily sheen than any topping Lapis had ever seen - it almost seemed to glow, like he was looking at a rainbow through a window made of barbecue sauce.

“…‘Happy Sauce?’” Lapis muttered, turning to inspect Lyra’s place. Sitting on the table nearby was a small glass bottle almost full of the strange condiment - which, now that Lapis looked at it, was definitely glowing. The bottle had no label - instead, it had a small, ominous smiley face painted on its side, backlit by the rainbow sheen of the vaguely-brown substance.

Bon Bon caught sight of the bottle and sighed. “Lyra, I thought you knew what you were getting into with that stuff!”

Behind the counter, Lyra gasped for breath as she rose from the depths of her glass of cider. “I didn’t think it was made with real rainbow! I thought it was, like, Zap-Apple glaze or something!”

“Why in Equestria would Mane-Street Dogs be selling Zap-Apple glaze?” Bon Bon said, spreading her hooves. “Zap-Apples are an Apple family specialty, there’s no way they’d let anypony else sell Zap-Apple produce!”

“Zap-Apples?” Lapis asked, frowning.

“They’re a special kind of rainbow-colored, magical apple,” Bon Bon explained, as Lyra took a deep breath and dove back into her glass of cider. “The Apple family have the only domestic Zap-Apple crop in Equestria, and they can only sell Zap-Apple jam once a year. The stuff’s delicious… unlike actual rainbows, such as what’s in that ‘Happy Sauce.’ Real rainbows are pretty to look at, but they taste spicy and nothing else besides.”

“O-kay,” Lapis said, setting aside the question of how purified rainbow could make its way into a condiment. He levitated the bottle of Happy Sauce over. “…No redeeming qualities? No habanero fruitiness, or anything?”

“Nope,” Lyra rasped, settling back into her seat with a quarter-full glass of cider. “Just spicy. And it’s gotta be mixed with honey or something in that bottle, ‘cause it just glued onto my tongue.” She scrunched up her face and stuck out her tongue, which still had a faint rainbow-y sheen. “Eugh.”

Lapis hesitated. Then, slowly and deliberately, he uncorked the bottle.

“Lapis,” Bon Bon said, in a calm, flat tone.

“Look,” Lapis said, slowly depositing a single drop of the sauce onto his hay dog. “I’ve never met a type of spicy pepper that wasn’t worth finding a way to eat. Chipotles are smoky, jalapeños are nice on just about anything, and even Scotch Bonnets are good in a 3-pound pot of chili.”

“Peppers are one thing, rainbows are another,” Lyra said, her eyes growing wide again. “Don’t do it, Lapis.”

“I’ve got to,” Lapis said, raising the hot dog to his lips. “If I don’t, I’ll wish I did.”

Then, he took a bite and began to chew. For a few moments, he couldn’t even tell anything was different. Then the drop of Happy Sauce found its way onto Lapis’ tongue.

Lapis blinked, grunting in pain, and Lyra snickered as he quickly levitated his own cider glass to his lips. Instead of chugging it, though, he took one mouthful and swished it around over his tongue, expecting the acidity of the cider to help dissolve the drop of sauce in his mouth. Instead of fading, the burning sensation on Lapis’ tongue began to spread beyond the small, smoldering smear of Happy Sauce, and he knew he’d made a mistake.

Well, there goes that plan. Lapis swallowed, grimacing as the fiery-sour cocktail of half-chewed hay dog sizzled its way down his throat, then opened his mouth to speak - but, with the first breath that hit the inside of his mouth, the leftover Happy Sauce was able to get in one last word, and he wound up coughing instead of speaking.

“Wishing you hadn’t?” Bon Bon asked.

Lapis coughed again, then managed to wash down the sauce with one last swig of cider. “Yeah, maybe a little.”

The rest of dinner passed mostly without incident. They ended up making small talk over dinner, and mostly avoided the reasons that Lapis had wound up in the hospital. Lyra gave him a quick, non-rhyming run-down on how Harmonic Cascades worked, and added that the average unicorn needed 3 days’ worth of rest - or minimal labor, at least - to replenish their magical stores. Lapis found himself glad for the information, as he’d so far assumed that his reservoir could be charged back up by a good night’s sleep alone.

Not too long afterward, Lyra and Bon Bon excused themselves, and Lapis headed to bed only a few minutes after they were gone, taking a few minutes to tug his blankets loose enough to lie beneath. Lapis passed out almost as soon as his head hit the pillow…

…He felt it in his gut as the drill rumbled beneath his feet, set his jaw at the clank of the angular, blunt-ended, tripartite metal doors before him. They slid up and to either side, opening to reveal churning, pale rock, going by in the bright floodlights fast enough to be little more than a dusty blur. His stomach lurched as the drop pod breached the stone and free-fell, just for a moment, through the mostly-empty air of the cavern. Something screeched as the teeth of the drill caught it midair, tearing it into chunky green paste with no more ceremony than a brief, wet crunch.

Then, the pod landed. He rose from his seat as the grate before the doors parted like a mouth, leaving no barrier between himself and the caverns outside. He hesitated only a moment, glancing briefly at the small screen beside the doors, where a red triangle was accompanied by the warning: ‘HAUNTED CAVE.’

Cave’s haunted, he thought, and he loaded the rifle at his side, a metallic ping echoing through the cavern as he floated the magazine into its slot. Then, as the ramp extended down before the door, he galloped down at full speed, tossing a blue glowstick ahead of himself as he charged through the cloud of dust.

He needn’t have bothered. This wasn’t the biggest cavern he’d seen, but it was one of the brightest - every few square yards, luminous lumps of pale-cyan crystal sprouted from the pale stone of the cave, each at least three times bigger than he was. He paused, waiting for Mission Control to deliver one of his usual speeches about the mission objective, but there was nothing from his headset save a subtle, sinister hiss of static. A pigeon flew past his head, trilling a tone that sounded as if it would be more at home coming from a machine.

Shrugging, he switched to his flare gun, aimed at the few dark patches of the cavern’s walls and ceiling, and fired. The flares shot through the air as gleaming-white blurs, casting broad circles of light across the dim patches, bringing to light gleaming veins of gold and glittering red crystal. Above, a massive portion of the cavern’s ceiling disintegrated into gravel and dust, and another enormous drill pulled a tangle of metal mesh and machinery into the cave floor a second later. The mass unfolded in a blocky bloom of ramps and wire lattice, revealing a metallic cylinder - a giant, gleaming ballpoint pen - enclosed by a ring-shaped platform, floodlights and turrets mounted around the circumference at regular intervals. The turrets rattled to life, twisting and angling, their barrels popping in mathematical, synchronized rhythm. High in the cave, a few rustling blurs shattered into sprays of green gunk before he got a chance to tell what they were.

He drew his grappling hook and pointed it at the space above one of the blue crystals, pulling the trigger. The hook sank into the stone, and a second later, he was whirring through the air at speed, his hooves clicking against the hard crystal as he touched down. Pulling out his pickaxe, he began to break one of the veins of red substance off the walls. Once he finished, he aimed the hook at another vantage point, this one near to a vein of gold, and zipped over to repeat the process. He didn’t let down his guard - nothing was pestering him yet, and the turrets would do a lot of the work for him, but he still might only get a breath or two to react.

Deep in some far crevice of the cavern, something thumped. A second later, the sound of a section of stone crumbling met his ears, chunks almost clacking as they shattered against each others’ sides. The pigeon perched on a protrusion of the vein of gold, shooting him a questioning look.

He lowered the pickaxe. “Cave’s haunted,” he explained.

The pigeon furrowed its brow, blinking with sharp, deep cyan eyes that almost seemed to glow.

“Cave’s haunted,” he repeated, raising the pickaxe. Then, he resumed chipping away at the vein of gold.

A few seconds later, he was done, and decided it was about time to work on the mission objective. He turned toward a narrow opening in the cavern, in the opposite side of the cave from where the sound of breaking stone had come a few moments before. One grappling-hook later, he was through the maw of the smaller cavern, squeezing between slanted, hex-shaped crystals of white quartz.

A smattering of small, glowing blue dots of crystal on one of the cave walls alerted him to his objective. Approaching their rough midpoint, he stared briefly at the wall, trying to decide what would be the best angle to dig into the stone through. Then, having made his decision, he raised the pick and began to swing it, the metal clicking against the stone.

One. Two. Three. And the stone didn’t crumble away.

Four. Five. A small hemisphere of rock crumbled, and he switched to another section. It, too, took five swings, instead of the three that he knew it ought to.

Again. And again. Until finally, his prize popped free of the rock - instead of another crystal, a small, dully-gleaming suitcase, locked shut. From its seam, the corner of a green paper bill was poking free, the number 100 barely visible in the shadows of the cave.

The sound of breaking stone echoed out again, far louder this time. He paused. That sounds like it's right under me, he thought.

The next moment, he had his grappling hook out, and was zipping back to the pillars of white quartz. He started to squeeze between them, making it a few steps inside - then, confetti began to fall around his head, and he paused-

The stone beneath his feet vanished, and he fell, the pigeon squawking in alarm. Below him, Pnkie Pie’s enormous, smiling, bubblegum-pink face waited. “Hi!” she piped, smiling, and then she rushed up toward him-

He turned his grappling hook to the ceiling, knowing already that there was nothing close enough to grapple to, and saw the pigeon swooping down toward him-

Lapis sat bolt upright in bed, gasping for breath, sweat pouring off his face. He looked to the window, his heart pounding in his chest, and saw that the moon was still high in the sky.

Comprehension dawned on him a few seconds later. He groaned, then flopped back onto his pillow. Okay, no Happy Sauce before bed. Good to know. Let’s get some sleep.

When he woke up the following morning, he set about cleaning up his home. That ended up being an all-day project, even with Lyra dropping by to lend a hoof and Nikki doing the dusting (in exchange for some birdseed, of course.)

The morning after that, he found himself heading down to his basement before breakfast. He’d put the workshop back together as well as he could, but all his tools were still broken, and he couldn’t fix them without the parts that the Parasprites had eaten. He was tempted to give them a shot anyway, to see if he could put something together with the damaged tools.

Eventually, though, he decided there wasn’t much point - he still had that backlog to get to, and besides, he didn’t even know what he wanted to build. So, he turned and headed back upstairs, fixed himself some breakfast, and sat down to eat. Lapis took a swig of the coffee, found that it had already cooled considerably, and was helping himself to another few mouthfuls when he spotted something on the other side of the window. Turning the corner onto the main street was an orange Earth-pony with a blondish sort of mane and a weathered brown Stetson hat.

He recognized the pony at once, and frowned. Huh. That’s odd. Normally, he didn’t see Applejack in town unless it was a weekend - he assumed that farmwork in the summer kept her too busy for much leisure.

Wonder what’s going on there, Lapis thought, watching as Applejack stopped another pony - hey, it’s Derpy Hooves! She’s up early - and struck up some brief conversation. Whatever Applejack’s doing, I probably won’t need to work around her.

Then Derpy pointed right toward Lapis’ shop.

Uh. Derpy? What’re you doing?

Applejack nodded and smiled. Then, she turned right toward Lapis’ shop.

Derpy?!

Applejack started heading toward Lapis’ shop at a brisk trot.

Derpy, what did you DO?! Lapis stood up, grabbed his mug and plate, and hurried back into the kitchen, closing the door behind himself and bracing it shut.

This was bad. This was very, very bad. One of the protagonists was actually coming to visit him, directly. Why? Why now? Why today? I’m gonna need to move. I’ll need to find a whole new shop, I’ll have to pack all my damn stuff, and-

Lapis was shaken from his thoughts by a knock at the door. “Hello?” a twangy voice called, muffled by the walls. “Anypony home?”

Please go away. Please go away. Please go away.

“…S’pose not, huh?”

“Yeah, he usually isn’t,” said another voice - Derpy’s, Lapis thought. “That’s what the corkboard’s for, see? You take one of these little slips, write up what you need, and stick it to the board with a tack. Then, once he’s done his job, you drop the bits here, and that’s that!”

“Huh,” Applejack replied. “This feller’s got it down to a business then, don’t he?”

“He has to, y’know? A lot of stuff gets broken in Ponyville.” Derpy chuckled. “I hit a lot fewer mailboxes now than I used to, but that barely puts a dent in all this.”

“Ya don’t say,” Applejack muttered, and the sound of rustling paper reached Lapis’ ears. “…Hold on, does this one say it’s from the Mayor?”

“Probably. ‘Check support beams and arches for central stage room…’ Wow, that’s a lot of arches.”

“So, he won’t arrive for at least a day?”

“At most a day,” Derpy said. “He’s got a lot on his plate, but he’s fast. You won’t need to worry about your rafter for long.”

“If ya say so,” Applejack replied, and a second or two later the distinct thunk of a tack entering the request-board reached Lapis’ ears. “Anyhow, Ah was goin’ to meet up with Pinkie Pie, and see if she knew any good places to pick up some bakin’ supplies…”

Applejack’s voice faded out as she and Derpy wandered off, but the gears were already turning in Lapis’ head. Okay, this is salvageable. She’s got a broken rafter, or something?

Lapis waited a few more seconds, then set down his breakfast, rushed to the notice board, grabbed the new request slip, and hurried back inside to look it over. Yeah, a broken rafter. She just wants it braced. But it sounds like Applejack’s going to be preoccupied in town for at least a little while, so…

Lapis nodded, set his jaw, then trotted back into the kitchen and slammed back his entire mug of coffee. So, if I knock this out right now, then there’s no risk of running into Applejack, and I’ll be headed back home in time for lunch.

Yeah. Lapis smirked down at his breakfast sandwich. It’ll be that easy. Sure.

He stuffed the rest of the sandwich into his mouth. Then, ten seconds later, he was out the door and headed for the Apple family farm.

It was a cloudy day in Ponyville. The sun wasn’t shining, instead casting its diffused glow through the pale, near-white color of the sky, which was only occasionally highlighted by a wisp of thicker cloud cover. That wasn’t to say it was gloomy, though - birds were still singing in the trees, and even the sporadic rustling noises of the critters seemed to be somehow cheerful. The emerald canopies of the trees on Sweet Apple Acres, some still dotted with the gleaming scarlet shapes of apples, almost brought a smile to Lapis’ face as he slowly, carefully advanced up the hill toward the Apple family barn.

The job he was here to to was simple, at least on its surface. One of the rafters in the Apple family’s storage barn was cracked, and they wanted it braced, so there was no chance of its falling apart at an inopportune time. Or at any time.

Lapis, however, had an entire barrel of the Apple family’s cider sitting on his counter, apparently donated by Big Mac and the rest of the family as a get-well-soon gift, and so he suspected subtler means. The Apple family was one of the more self-sufficient families in Ponyville. They’d raised their own barns before; if they wanted their rafter braced up, there was a fair chance they could do it themselves.

As evidence went, it wasn’t much to go off of. But, to Lapis, there was a fair chance that the repair slip in his bag was little more than a convenient excuse to get him to come over, have some dinner, and get to know him a little. And considering he’d had to take a half-hour’s detour on the way to Sweet Apple Acres, in order to avoid the side of town where Rainbow Dash was organizing some cloud-clearing, Lapis got the feeling that today wasn’t a good day to take his chances.

Under any other circumstances, Lapis would’ve been almost happy to head on over, but there was a problem: Applejack Apple. Applejack, as it happened, was one of the Element Bearers - meaning, if he went anywhere near her, there was a very good chance he’d mess up the timeline. And if that happened, then Lapis would lose one of the few precious advantages he had in Equestria: his knowledge, however patchy, of the future. Not to mention the possibility that, by changing the future, Lapis would somehow disrupt the general tendency of Equestria to let things generally turn out alright.

It was, at least in his mind, entirely possible that the fate of the world rested on Applejack’s not seeing him repair the barn’s roof, and therefore, it was justified that he should come up with some brilliant plan.

Unfortunately, Lapis didn’t have a plan.

I mean, I tried, he thought, as he rounded a dense cluster of apple trees, finally catching sight of the barn. I was coming up with ideas all the way here. But at the end of the day, the thing I’ve learned is…

Lapis caught sight of who was on the Apple family’s front lawn, and froze in his tracks, his eyes snapping wide open.

…The thing is, no plan survives contact with Ponyville.

On the one hand, Applejack was nowhere in sight. This was good; it meant that she might still be in Ponyville, and that Lapis could proceed as if she weren’t around.

On the other hand, Pinkie and Twilight were both on Applejack’s lawn. This was bad.

Reflexively, Lapis yanked the mask out of his saddlebag and strapped it across his face, ducking behind a tree as he went. Okay. This is… fine. Sure. I can just go away, and come back later. It’ll give me time to come up with some better ideas.

…Or, for all I know, Pinkie is just hanging out here for the week, and I’ll have no idea until Applejack thinks I’m avoiding her on purpose. And if that happens, she might leave me alone… or, she might make a point of hunting me down to find out what my problem is.

Lapis sighed, attempting to facehoof, but only succeeded in smashing his entire face under the mask, wincing and pulling his hoof away. Why can’t anything be easy?

He peeked around the tree, trying to observe what Twilight and Pinkie were up to. Pinkie seemed, as far as Lapis could tell, to just be going about her day as normal - just then, she was smelling some flowers. Lapis quickly switched his focus to Twilight.

She was… training a pair of binoculars on Pinkie, from the opposite side of a small stack of hay bales next to the door of the storage barn that Lapis had to make his way into. Lapis cocked his head, then took a closer look.

Twilight was wearing what looked like a pith hat, over a look of grim determination. She was covered in Band-Aids - which, for some reason, were the same hue of pale brown as back on Earth - and she was dictating to Spike. Spike, meanwhile, was bearing nothing unusual besides a notepad and a pencil, taking notes while Twilight spoke.

…Well, Lapis thought, at least those binoculars aren’t pointed at me, and at least she isn’t guarding the door on purpose. Still, I’d better not get her attention. There’s a lot of trees here, but the binoculars might still make it easier for her to track me down.

…Not to mention Pinkie’s still around. Running from Twilight when it was just Twilight almost got me caught, but I definitely don’t think I could escape from Twilight and Pinkie at the same time. Lapis swallowed, and he felt his ears flop back on his head.

Then again, she’s pretty focused on Pinkie… maybe I could just sneak around behind her? Lapis considered the idea for all of five seconds before snorting and shaking his head, deliberately flicking his ears back upright. Sneaking up from behind is the last thing you ever do to a horse. The last thing.

…I just got out of the hospital for overuse of magic, damn it. Don’t make me cast that invisibility spell again, I barely remember the incantation. Please. Please?

Lapis grimaced. Then, slowly, he rounded the tree and started creeping up the hill through the orchards, keeping the incantation in mind without reciting it. He stayed low, doing his best to keep out of Twilight’s field of view - which, sadly, meant going behind her. Through sheer dumb luck, Pinkie didn’t seem to be looking his way, either. Occasionally she would glance in his and Twilight’s shared general direction, and Lapis would freeze where he was, hardly daring to breathe, until he looked away.

He got within ten yards of the door, got into a bush, and suddenly realized how stupid he was being. What the hell was I thinking?! I should’ve just stayed put and waited for them to leave, then come back later!

Focus. I can still do this. This barn probably has a back door. If it does, then I can go through there, fix the rafter, and get out. And if it doesn’t, well, that just puts a whole barn between me and these three.

Lapis hesitated, then rose from the bushes, not taking his eyes off Twilight and Spike as he crossed below the white picket-fence that outlined the Apple family’s residence- and his hooves thunked down on something wooden, loud.

Shitshitshit! Lapis dove over the fence and back into the bush at once, only remembering after a second to tug his tail in behind him. He didn’t dare to stick his head clear of the shrubbery, opting instead to peer through the foliage.

To his dismay, Twilight had perked up- but she wasn’t looking at him. Instead, her gaze was trained on Pinkie, who appeared to be having some kind of muscle spasm - as Lapis watched, bewildered, her ears flopped forward and back atop her head, her eyes fluttered, and her knees jittered beneath her.

“Hold on,” Lapis heard Spike say, and he turned back to look at Twilight and Spike. “You told me that’s the combo that says ‘watch out for opening doors!’”

Twilight scoffed as Spike abandoned the cover of the hay-bales, seeking shelter behind another stack nearer to Pinkie. “You really, really believe in this stuff, don’t you? Here, let me show you there’s nothing to be afraid of.”

…Oh, this is Pinkie-sense stuff. ‘Watch out for opening doors?’ Like, when they slam open and catch on your leg? Lapis frowned, watching as Spike continued to cower. Then, he looked at the space where he’d stepped a few moments before, and blinked in surprise - there, set into the earth and painted red, was what looked like the door to a storm shelter. Well, I guess I could disarm this one. Just in case.

Lapis gave the handle of the door a brief, sharp magical yank, and the door swung open, the glow of his magic on the handle only visible for the briefest moment. His satisfied grin froze on his face as Twilight approached the doorway, not looking where she was going, and dropped directly into the stairwell-

“Whaaa-!”

OH FUCK-

Lapis reached out and tried to telekinetically grab onto Twilight- and for a moment, it worked, Twilight’s fall slowing midair, her neck rotating away from the edge of a stair as a coat of Lapis’ brown magic wrapped around her. Then, suddenly, Lapis’ grip snapped like a rubber band, and Twilight’s fall resumed, Lapis helpless to do anything but watch as she rolled down the stairs and out of sight, yelping in pain with every bump.

Oh shit. Oh shit, did I just-

“Twilight!” a voice echoed from the inside of the cellar, as Spike hurried over to peer down. “You came over to visit mah new apple-cellar! How nice! …Twi? You okay? Uh, Twi?”

Spike must’ve caught sight of Twilight, because he let out a sigh of relief, then winced. Lapis felt himself relaxing a little. Okay. I think she’s alive.

“…I think I just sprained my fetlocks,” Twilight’s voice echoed up, and this time Lapis sighed with relief, too. “Applejack, why in Equestria did you leave that door open?!”

“Whuh- Ah did no such thing, sugarcube,” Applejack’s voice echoed up, and Lapis swallowed. Oh, bad bad bad. She must’ve gotten back here during the detour. Shit! “Didn’t you walk across it a few moments ago?”

“I don’t know, but I saw it swinging open!” Spike called down. “That’s amazing, Pinkie totally called it!”

Twilight groaned, more in annoyance than pain, and Lapis suddenly remembered why he was hiding in a bush. He looked over at Pinkie, and saw that she was just turning away from the cellar door, bouncing off into the orchards. Okay. There’s Pinkie, there’s Twilight, there’s Applejack and Spike. I don’t hear anypony in the barn, so as soon as I’ve got an opening, I take it.

A few seconds later, Applejack emerged from the barn, an annoyed-looking Twilight slung across her back like a sack of potatoes. “C’mon, Twi, let’s get you to Ponyville General. They’ll have some braces for your fetlocks, Ah’m sure of it.”

“Thanks, Applejack,” Twilight muttered, and Lapis held his breath as her gaze swept over the bush where he was hiding, ready to recite the invisibility incantation at a moment’s notice - then, she and Applejack passed by, Spike following behind. Lapis waited until they were down the road and out of sight, then he emerged from the bush, tucking the mask into his saddlebag, and darted into the barn.

Shit, he thought, peering up into the dark of the rafters and searching for any sign of a crack. Too close. Way too close.

Bon Bon had explained the whole Pinkie-Sense deal to him not long after they’d met. He’d been skeptical initially, but after seeing how seriously Bon Bon seemed to take it, he decided to humor her - and, the first time he’d seen Pinkie’s tail twitching, he’d ducked for cover just in time to dodge one of Derpy Hooves’ finer landings. After that, no further convincing was required…

Except maybe it should’ve been, Lapis thought, scanning the shadowed rafters for any sign of a crack. Maybe I should’ve had a little less faith in Pinkie Pie’s muscle spasms. Maybe then I wouldn’t have ended up putting Twilight in danger, again.

He spotted the crack, and one flash of light and burst of heat on his flank later, the rafter was whole. I need to be more careful.

Lapis got out of Sweet Apple Acres almost without further incident - on his way out, he spotted Big Mac cresting a hill. They exchanged a wave, but Lapis headed for the hills before any further hospitalities could take place. After all, there were a lot of arches in the Town Hall.

Once Lapis got back to Ponyville, and confirmed that Rainbow had wrapped up her duties, he immediately set about clearing out as much of his backlog as possible. He didn’t manage to get to the arches in Town Hall, but he took care of at least a third of the backlog, mostly by skipping all the other roofing jobs. Those, I’m saving for cool weather, so I don’t end up dripping sweat into somepony’s roof again.

The following morning, Lapis had just finished breakfast and was getting ready to check his workload for the day when a knock came at his door. A quick glance through the window confirmed that it was Mayor Mare, and so he opened it up. “Hey, how’s it going?”

“Busy, but forget me, Lapis, how are you?” Mayor Mare said, quickly making her way inside. “Only three days out of the hospital, and already back to work?”

“Yep. Much as I wish I could rest, this town doesn’t fix itself,” Lapis confirmed. “What brings you over here, anyway? I doubt you’re just checking in.”

Mayor Mare nodded. “Unfortunately, you’re right. While you were… indisposed, I knew you were looking for the blueprints of this building, and it got me a little curious, myself. So, I went digging in the archives, and as it turns out, those blueprints don’t exist.”

Lapis blinked. “You’re sure?”

“Positive,” Mayor Mare confirmed. “I went looking before and after Ms. Sparkle re-organized the building, and I couldn’t see so much as one square inch of this house’s plans.”

Uh-oh. “Okay, weird question, but did you just say Twilight Sparkle re-organized your archives? Like, on her own?”

Mayor Mare’s ears pricked up, and a faint crease appeared on her brow. “Well… yes, I did. Once she’d finished writing up the damage report, she was kind enough to offer me a summary of the magical principles involved in your… incident, and that wound up including a full re-organization of the Town Hall archives.”

“You had her write a damage report,” Lapis asked, panic rising in his gut.

“I did, but… well, Ms. Heartstrings had a word with me about your relations, and I made sure not to tell Ms. Sparkle that you were the responsible pony,” Mayor Mare said. “…I’m sorry if I’m intruding, Lapis, but what happened between you and the Element Bearers? They’re nice ponies, and I’d hate to think they’ve made some sort of mistake.”

“It’s not that anything happened,” Lapis quickly said, “it’s more that… well, I’ve been in Ponyville for a little longer than a month now, and they’ve been responsible for about a third of the broken stuff I’ve fixed - more, if you count Rainbow. …That reminds me, actually,” Lapis added, “have you ever heard of something called ‘restricted airspace’ before?”

Mayor Mare chuckled. “I have, but somehow, I doubt Ms. Dash would constrain herself by it. Besides, she is captain of the weather team, so technically she’s doing her job up there.”

“Oh. Well, there goes that plan,” Lapis sighed. “I mean, I guess she’s making me money and all, but still…”

“Yes, I expect the local thatchmakers are very confident in their job security,” Mayor Mare agreed. “Oh! Right, I almost forgot. It’s not only the blueprints for your house that are missing, though I’ll likely be sending somepony over to conduct a survey of your property shortly. There’s also no record of the last… well, of any of the previous ponies who lived here, at least none that I could find.”

“That’s… disturbing,” Lapis muttered. “So, another weird question, but have you mentioned any of this to Bon Bon?”

Mayor Mare cocked her head. “Bon Bon? No, I can’t say I have. Why, do you think she might be able to shed some light on the situation?”

“Call it a hunch, but yeah, I get the feeling she’ll wanna know,” Lapis replied. If I'm lucky, she'll be able to take care of... whatever this is, before it affects me. “Oh, yeah. You turned in a job about the rafters and arches in Town Hall, right?”

“Oh, that, yes,” Mayor Mare said, waving a hoof. “That’s just another consultation, feel free to save it for last. There’s nothing wrong that I can find, the building just sounds a little bit… creaky, lately, and I wanted some more experienced eyes to make sure the Parasprites hadn’t eaten anything structurally important.”

“Alright, then the arches and the support pillars are happening today,” Lapis said, “because I’m sure nopony in Ponyville wants Town Hall getting run out of tents. The rafters will have to wait, though. I’m saving all my roofwork up for one day, just so that I can get it all over with at once.”

“Be sure not to let it sit too long,” Mayor Mare said, turning for the door. “I tried saving up some paperwork for a ‘Taxes Day’ last month, and I ended up putting it off for…” Mayor Mare paused, briefly tapping her chin with her hoof. Then her eyes widened, and for several uncomfortable seconds, she stared off into space.

“Oh,” she eventually said, then she had a quick, nervous laugh. “Well, I guess I’d better be going, then!”

“See you around!” Lapis called, as the Mayor started trotting back toward Town Hall. Then, shaking his head in amusement, he grabbed another sheaf off his request board, and started looking it over, quickly re-pinning the roofing jobs back to the board. Nothing too unusual, just an extra-large helping of his normal work, until…

…Oh, come on! Really?! Again?!

He had another job request from Sweet Apple Acres - this time, though, instead of a rafter, the request simply read ‘Re-attach blade to lumber sled.’

At this rate, Lapis thought, I might need to write her a letter or something.

…No, that would be insane. ‘Dear Applejack, despite the fact that we’ve never met, and that you’ve never expressed any good regard for me to anypony I talk to on a regular basis, I believe that all the repair jobs you’re sending me are secretly attempts to get me to stay over for dinner. While I appreciate your unspoken invitations, I fear I must decline, as I am severely allergic to the color orange. Apologies and well-wishes, Lapis Print. P.S. - paint won’t work; I’ve tried.’

Maybe I’d better drop by the next time she’s out of town? Lapis thought, slowly gearing up for the other jobs on his list. Have dinner with the Apple family, without Applejack?

…That might work. Okay, so that’s the theory, but in the meantime…

Lapis looked at the repair sheet again, then swallowed. In the meantime, I need to fix this railing, or eventually she might decide to just show up here and wait.

If I’m lucky, she’ll be in the orchards when I arrive. If I’m unlucky…

As soon as Lapis saw Applejack, he knew something was off.

For one thing, she was dragging the lumber sled that he’d been hired to fix, even despite its detached rail. The rail was sitting atop the lumber sled, and Lapis only needed one look to know he’d be able to repair it inside of five seconds - it was broken right down the middle, but as breaks went, it was pretty clean.

For another thing… well, Lapis didn’t know Applejack very well, but if that squint in her eyes was anything to judge by, she was feeling determined about something. Or stubborn. Maybe both. …Yeah, probably both.

As Lapis observed from just behind the crest of a nearby hill, Applejack dragged the sled to the very bottom of the hill on which the Apple family barn sat. Then, after glancing briefly back at the house, she sat down, staring down along the road that led to Ponyville. And then, she did the one thing that Lapis was most afraid she would do.

She waited.

Shit, Lapis thought. Keep calm. I’ve got this. Think.

The sled is a five-second fix. I need to get in, get it done, and get out - without giving her any more reason to come hunt me down.

I’ve gotta fix the sled today. That’s just a given. I fixed the rafter the day she delivered the order, I need to be consistent, or else.

I’ve also got to get the rest of my backlog done today. Ergo, I can’t just wait around here forever - either Applejack gives up inside of, let’s say, half an hour, or I need to get her away from the sled somehow.

Lapis ducked back down below the top of the hill, then started rifling through his saddlebags, ignoring the wetness at his back - it must’ve rained the night before, because the grass was half-soaked with dew. Any distraction I come up with needs to not seem like a distraction. I can’t just make any random loud noise, it needs to seem like something that could normally happen in an apple orchard…

…Wait, why is the Happy Sauce in here?

Lapis frowned, then levitated the bottle of glowing, rainbow-hued hot sauce out of his bag. “Did Nikki put this in here?” he muttered, then he inspected the bottle again. Maybe I grabbed it when I was packing, somehow?

Something about the bottle was niggling at him, and as Lapis stared down at that sharply-painted smiley face, he realized what it was - the color. The rainbow color.

Hadn’t Bon Bon said something about the Apple family having rainbow-colored apples?

And all at once, a plan formed in his head. It was quick, easy, and it even fit with the same bizarre cartoon logic that seemed to explain Pinkie’s behavior.

I take an apple, Lapis thought, and I coat it in the Happy Sauce, so it’ll look close enough to a Zap-Apple. I pick a hill, far from me, and I get the apple to roll down it, so it just happens to stop near Applejack. Applejack sees it, thinks it’s a Zap-Apple, and thinks that either the trees have bloomed early or that some animal is pilfering her crop. Either way, she runs off to go check, I fix the lumber cart, and hopefully that’s enough.

Grinning, Lapis levitated an apple off one of the nearby trees and unstoppered the bottle of Happy Sauce. If I’m really lucky, she might even take a bite of it, and go run to get some water…

…to wash the sauce down with.

Lapis hesitated, a drop of the Happy Sauce dangling from the neck of the bottle just an inch or two above the surface of the apple, the condiment shimmering in the sunlight. Maybe it was only because he could smell it, but all of a sudden, that same awful spicy taste was back in his mouth, glued right back onto his tongue, the roof of his mouth, searing itself into the back of his throat…

And everything he remembered had come from one drop.

The drop split from the neck of the bottle, falling toward the apple’s shining surface, and Lapis yanked the apple out of the way, righting and corking the bottle. Wait, what the HELL am I thinking?! Didn’t I just decide I needed to be more careful?!

It would work. Somehow, Lapis knew it would work, and that knowledge was just enough to make him hesitate. Then, setting his jaw, he returned the bottle of Happy Sauce to his saddlebags. Nope. Not gonna happen. I’ll find another way-

“Applejack!” a deep voice twanged, and Lapis froze, his eyes snapping open as he pressed himself flat against the back of the hill.

“Oh! Uh, Big Macintosh!” he heard Applejack reply. “What brings you out here?”

“What’s keepin’ you out here?” Big Mac asked, and Lapis hazarded another glance over top of the hill. Big Mac didn’t look mad, but he was certainly confused. “Applejack, Ah know you know we gotta get the rest of those apples into the apple-cellar. Y’all aren’t waitin’ for that repair-pony to show up, are you?”

“Well... yes Ah am,” Applejack said, “and Ah mean to keep waitin’ till he comes around.”

“Didn’t you say yesterday mornin’ he had half a tree’s worth of paper tacked to his request board?” Big Macintosh asked. “He’s a busy pony, Applejack. Y’all know he’s up to his eyeballs in leftovers from the Parasprites. Ah’m sure he’ll have a moment of free time eventually-”

“You’re darn right, Ah know he’s busy, and that’s the problem!” Applejack said, stepping forward and putting her hoof down. “Big Mac, between the two of us, which one knows better what a village wrecked by three-hundred-some-odd bunny rabbits looks like?”

Big Mac paused, cocking an eyebrow. “Well, Ah’d say you would, considerin’-”

“Wrong.” Applejack drew herself to her full height. “You do, Big Mac. An’ Ah know you do, because Ah was so tired, all Ah can remember is one big, blurry blob. Now, since you know that, about how much time do y’all think it took this Lapis feller to clean up after that bunny stampede?”

About a day and a half, Lapis thought. Big Mac, not being telepathic, remained silent.

“When Ah took Twilight to Ponyville General,” Applejack said, “an’ mentioned in passin’ to the nurse that Ah was waitin’ to get that rafter fixed, she said that the repair-pony had only gotten outta bed two days ago. That's three days, now, but three days ain’t enough time to recover, Big Mac. You know it ain’t.”

“…E-yup,” Big Mac admitted. “But Ah don’t think you’ve seen this pony fixin’ stuff, either. Ah have, and from what Ah’ve seen, it’s not nearly so taxin’ as apple-buckin’.”

“Big Mac,” Applejack began, but Big Macintosh put his hoof on her shoulder. “This ain’t his apple-buckin’ season, Applejack. Ah’ll bet that won’t happen ‘til the winter snows come down. But ours is still happenin’ right now, and we’ve got enough to do already, without workin’ up a sweat over every guest an’ greetin’. You wanna make sure nopony pushes themselves too hard?” He reached down, then poked Applejack in the chest. “Start with this one. Now, c’mon, the sooner we get those apples into the cellar, the sooner we can start with the cider.”

Applejack sighed, her ears flopping back. “Alright, Ah hear ya. But we will get him over for supper if Ah see him drop by, Big Mac. Difficult labor or not, if he really has that little spare time, it’ll do him good to get a mite behind on his work.”

Sure won’t, Lapis thought, as Applejack and Big Mac headed back up the hill. As soon as they were over the hill and out of sight, he hurried over to the wagon, jamming the sled back into place and shutting his eyes. He blinked in time with the flash of light, and felt the burst of heat on his flank, but that was all it took - when he opened his eyes, the sled was fixed.

As Lapis turned to leave, he paused, Big Mac’s words reverberating in his head. “This ain’t his apple-buckin’ season…”

Please be wrong, he thought.

Then he started back down the road into Ponyville at a quick trot.

The rest of his workday was more standard fare until around four-thirty, which was when Lapis headed over to Town Hall for the Mayor’s consultation. He had just arrived when Nikki touched down on his shoulder. Lapis gave her a quick boop on the beak, to which Nikki responded by lightly cuffing his ear. Then, they headed inside.

As it turned out, the Mayor tended to keep the interior of the Hall in a bare-bones, no-frills condition whenever the Princess wasn’t in town. Lapis wasn’t a fan, but he had to admit, it really brought out the Roman look of the building. With all the indented pillars, it almost felt like a government building back on Earth… well, except for the gaping hole in the wall.

What the Mayor didn’t do, though, was hire anypony to dust the place. Every shaft of light from the numerous windows was highlighted with a thousand swirling motes, and Lapis found his nose itching after only a few steps inside the building.

The Mayor was waiting for him in front of the stage, staring up toward the balcony that overlooked the rest of the room. She seemed lost in thought, her lips silently moving as she stared up at the blackness between the curtains.
Lapis walked up beside her, glanced up at the balcony, and decided to take a wild guess. “I still can’t believe it’s only been a month.”

Mayor Mare blinked, jerking out of her reverie at once. “Oh! My apologies, Lapis, I didn’t even hear you come in!” She chuckled, then sighed and stared back up at the balcony again. “But, yes. I was thinking much the same myself. Sometimes, I swear it still smells like a storm in here.”
The sound of Nightmare Moon’s insane laughter echoed in Lapis’ ears, but he let the twist of sympathetic emotion wash over him without reaction. “Well, at least nopony got hurt… And at least she’s better now. Princess Luna, I mean.”

“Yes, there is that at least.” The Mayor cleared her throat. “Well, I suppose we’d better get to business. It feels like this building’s been creaking in the wind a bit more than usual lately, which is why I hired you to come in and check it out. Just… tighten the bolts and patch up the cracks, I suppose.”

“Makes sense,” Lapis said, nodding and looking over the building. “You know, it’s not unusual at all for a building to move with the wind. Better to bend and stand back up than to fall over stiff.”

“Yes… Lapis, am I a bad mayor?”

Lapis paused, Nikki fluttering her wings to keep her balance as he stopped. “What?”

“Me,” Mayor Mare said, her ears flicking back. “I mean, first it’s finding the carpenter-ponies to put together a new section of wall, then it’s your missing paperwork, and now it’s a six-inch stack of tax papers on my desk.

“And besides,” she added, “I’ve been thinking, and… when all that nastiness with Nightmare- eh, I mean, Princess Luna - happened, I just… panicked. Everything felt like it was falling down around me, and I tried to help keep things in order, but before I knew it, the whole town was screaming and running in circles. It took you and Bon Bon coming in to stop things from getting worse, and even then, I couldn’t figure out how to make it better without her practically telling me what to do!”

The Mayor sighed, lowering her head. “I feel like… it might be better for Ponyville if I weren’t the one in charge. If maybe somepony else was running things, instead of me.”

Lapis hesitated, then slowly turned to face the Mayor. Well, shit. What am I supposed to say, here?

“…I mean, I could be wrong,” Lapis began, “but I haven’t seen anypony else in town with a sealed decree on their flank.”

Wait, how long have I been saying ‘everypony’ for? …Later. That’s a crisis for later. Deal with this one first. And speaking of crises…

As Mayor Mare looked up, Lapis remembered how he’d almost risked giving Applejack chemical burns in her mouth. Then, he realized who hadn’t needed to stop and think, and suddenly he knew what to say.

“And, for what it’s worth, you and the rest of this town were confronted by the stuff of nightmares,” Lapis said. “Of course you panicked, all of you. What’s different about you is that when you panicked, your instinct was to help everypony else. You put them first. That might not be the reason you got your Mark, but - at least in my books - it does make you Mayor material. Make sense?”

Mayor Mare hesitated, then slowly nodded, a smile spreading across her face. “…Well, yes. When you put it that way, I suppose it does.”

“Good,” Lapis said, feeling a relieved grin spread across his own face. “So, Ms. Mayor, where do you need me to check first?”

“Oh! Right, yes. If you could look over the top of those pillars, by the north window…”

Lapis levitated his ladder over, climbed up, and started examining the pillars. They were, as far as he could tell, undamaged - he wasn’t enough of an architect to judge how tight the bolts should be, but they didn’t look like they were rusted or anything, so that was close enough for him. “All looking good so far,” Lapis called out, briefly glancing out the window. I wonder if I can see my house from here… Nope. Yeah, it's on the other side, right.

“Alright,” Mayor Mare called back. “Well, keep going, and if you find anything, let me know. And… thank you, Lapis, for letting me drop that on you. I’m feeling much better now.”

“Least I could do,” Lapis replied, climbing down the ladder and moving on to the next pillars.

He didn’t end up finding anything. Lapis left Town Hall after about half an hour, barely fending off the Mayor’s third apology for her apparent lapse, and headed back for his shop. Despite himself, he smiled at the sight of his request board. Halfway done. At this rate, I’ll be able to slow down again in… about two days, assuming Roof Day doesn’t-

“Uh, pardon me, Lapis?”

“Hey, how’s it-,” Lapis said, turning to see who’d spoken - and stopped, his eyes widening as he realized it was Big Macintosh.

Lapis didn’t see any sign of Applejack, but he tried to ready the invisibility incantation, just in case. “Oh hey, what’s up, Big Mac? Thanks for the cider, by the way, it’s been great so far.”

“Don’t mention it,” Big Mac said. “Glad to see you outta the hospital and drinkin’ it. Ah was just over here to drop off the bits for fixin’ up that rafter and the sled, but… well, Ah was wonderin’, are you avoidin’ mah sister at all?”

Shit. “Uh, you mean Applejack? The Element Bearer? No way, what makes you think I’ve been avoiding her?”

Big Mac shrugged. “Well, it’s likely just a coincidence, but somehow or another, all three times you dropped by to fix somethin’, she wasn’t around to see you do it.”

“Huh,” Lapis said, rubbing the back of his neck, and doing everything he could to not let his ears flop back. “That’s… surprising. Maybe I just have bad timing, or something?”

“E-yup,” Big Mac said. “That’s what Ah thought. …Oh, and Ah see you’ve been puttin’ a dent in that corkboard of yours.”

“Yep, sure have,” Lapis said. Yes. Please. Ask me about my workload, not Applejack. Anything but Applejack. “I’ll have it blank two days from now, at this rate.”

“E-yup. That’s still an awful lot of stuff to fix all by yourself, though,” Big Mac said, staring up at the workload. “Are you sure you’re not overworkin’ yourself? Not at all?”

…Anything but that, or Applejack. “Not gonna lie, it’s rough,” Lapis sighed. “But I’ll make it just fine. I’ve pulled off crazier stuff before, and I’ll probably do it again.”

Big Mac cocked an eyebrow, then sighed, and for half a second, something that looked like an exasperated grin flashed across his face. “Well, if you say so. Anyway, Ah better get you your bits and get on back, ‘fore Granny Smith gets to wonderin’ why Ah’m takin’ so long. Y’all should drop by sometime, Ah think she’s fixin’ to make a pie soon.”

“Oh, thanks,” Lapis said, as Big Mac reached into his own saddlebags and presented Lapis with a surprisingly hefty sack of bits. “See you around, Big Mac!”

“See you!” Big Mac replied. Then, Big Mac turned and headed down the street, rounding a corner toward Sweet Apple Acres and vanishing from sight.

As soon as Big Mac was gone, Lapis stepped inside his home, shut the door, and immediately slumped against it, sitting on the floor with a thump.

“I’ve gotta get out of here,” he muttered. “I need to get some time to stop, and think things through, and let stuff here cool off.”

Slowly, he stood back up and plodded over to his basement, scuffing through a large, dusty hoofprint near the counter. When he reached the basement, he sat at the workbench, staring down at the single piece of wooden shrapnel that he’d saved from the mana concentrator. Then, he turned to glance around at his half-eaten rack of tools.

It’s only gonna get harder, he realized. Avoiding them, without causing any extra trouble. It’s only going to get more difficult, unless I meet them, and I can’t let that happen. Magic isn’t enough - I need better equipment, too.

Absently, he picked up a slightly-chewed copper ingot from a stack beside the anvil, levitating it over to his side. Most of the words on its surface were too tooth-marked to read, but one glimmered against the surface of the ingot:

‘AMBERHOOF’.

Author's Note

Patch Notes:
- Replaced all mentions of “Zebrica” with “Farasi.” The nation of Farasi is, in the IDW comics, an off-the-map coastal region that also happens to be Zecora’s home country (named after the Swahili word for “horse.”) For the curious, Zecora’s specific hometown is Zebrat, the capital city of Farasi, and Twilight and the gang head over there in the first arc of the comics’ 10th season.
- Corrected “it” to “it was.” This issue may have been caused by partial corruption of Bon Bon’s dialogue generation algorithm, which may in turn have been caused by low system power at the time of generation. (Winter Star)
- Corrected “needed fixed” to “needed to be fixed.” See previous. (Softy Soft)

Alrighty, so, hey! Welcome back, and - for all of you who understood the non-metaphorical parts of Lapis’ dream sequence - Rock and Stone!

Actually, about that dream sequence. A few of the comments you guys have been making is stuff like “But what if Luna sees one of his dreams?” Well, maybe normal Equestrians have dreams that are more like flashbacks, but Lapis is a human from Earth - and, like most humans from Earth, that means his dreams tend to be a little loopier than that. (Especially when they may or may not be influenced by food with extreme spice of a dubious origin.) And, to be clear, I was careful to make sure Lapis’ dream made a lot more sense than mine usually do - or maybe my subconscious symbolism is just less heavy-handed than my conscious symbolism?

The trapdoor into Applejack’s apple cellar. What you just read represents attempt number 3 to resolve why that door swung open just in time for Twilight to drop in, while Applejack was far enough down inside to not see Twilight until she reaches the bottom of the staircase. Attempt 1 was that Lapis dropped Twilight in on purpose, but… well, that ended up contradicting his entire development for the chapter, so no. Attempt 2 was a little more interesting: Applejack heard Lapis walking over the door, thought somepony was knocking, and opened the door to see no-one there; so, she headed back downstairs and got all the way into the basement just in time to be there when Twilight fell down to greet her. Rewatching the episode led me to scrap that theory - the in-episode timing just doesn’t work, it’s too quick for that.

(You may also have noticed that I didn’t touch on Princess Celestia being around to drop out of the sky. That would’ve been another potential tie-in, and it might even have made sense for the story - but, well, if I explained all of Pinkie’s mysteries, she just wouldn’t feel like Pinkie anymore. Therefore, I hereby and henceforth certify that, whatever Princess Celestia was doing near Ponyville during Feeling Pinkie Keen, it had absolutely nothing to do with Lapis Print.)

And finally, those of you who remember certain portions of the dialogue of Feeling Pinkie Keen might remember that Pinkie says something interesting, when Twilight confronts her about knowing that she was watching. This line comes off as typical Pinkie absurdity, mostly because it is... ~~but what if~~ okay no I wasn't actually smart enough to write that into the chapter, but it would be really cool if I were.

See you in the next one!

3^2: Gumdrop the Ball

It was another baking-hot summer morning in Ponyville, but this time, Lapis was lucky enough to be inside - and in his own house. He was just pulling the blanket off his guest bed when he heard Lyra bursting through his front door. “Hey! Lapis, you home?”

“No,” Lapis called, rolling the blanket into a bundle and setting it on its end beside the door, then turning to regard the rest of the junk in the guest bedroom. “What’s up, Lyra?”

He heard the sound of hooves making their way down the hall, and a few seconds later, Lyra poked her head around the door. “Okay, so… wait, I don’t think I’ve ever looked in here before!”

“The guest bedroom?” Lapis asked, glancing back at Lyra as he walked over to one of the dressers. “Lyra, there’s only seven rooms in my house, and that’s if you count the closet. Weren’t you here when Bon Bon went poking around?”

“Uh… well, no, I thought she was out picking up powdered sugar,” Lyra said, her ears momentarily flopping back. “But I like what you’ve done with the nightstands! Has anypony actually slept in here?”

“Nope,” Lapis said, closing the dresser drawers. What am I even looking in this dresser for, anyway? It’s not like I need to bring clothes, I’ve got fur. “…Well, not besides Gilda. But anyway, what brings you here?”

“Oh yeah, right!” Lyra said, perking up. “So, you remember that concert I was supposed to have last week? The one that got canceled, because instruments kept disappearing?”

“Yeah,” Lapis said, floating the rolled-up blanket onto his back and turning for the door, Lyra quickly stepping out of the way. “Did you find… somepony’s instrument?”

“Nope, all the musician-ponies have their instruments already, Pinkie gave them all back,” Lyra said, following Lapis down the hall. “She took them, but only because she needed to get rid of the Parasprites. No, the Mayor’s hosting a redo!”

Lapis blinked, midway through trying to stuff the rolled-up blanket into the suitcase on his bed, then he turned. “Oh, awesome! When is it!”

Lyra was beaming. “Today! It’s the luckiest thing, too - I’ve been practicing the songs that I was going to perform at the concert anyway, so I’ve already got them memorized! It’s on the same schedule as last time, too - you coming?”

Lapis hesitated, glancing briefly back at the suitcase on his bed. “Uh…”

…I can do that tomorrow, he thought. “Yeah, I’m going. Concert starts at noon, right?”

“Yep!” Lyra chirped. “I’ll see you there- oh, also, Bon Bon’s making another tray of sweets to bring, but this time she’s doing gumdrops instead of pecan bars, and she might be getting just a little nervous. Listen, I know you probably have plans today, but it’d be a real help if you could lend her a horn… please?”

Oh. Lapis sighed, then nodded. “You’re in luck, I actually took the day off. Bon Bon’s shop is on Acorn Route, right?”

“That’s the place!” Lyra said, turning toward the front door. She got about three steps that way before hesitating. “Um, hey, what’re you doing with that suitcase?”

“Packing,” Lapis said, stepping out of his bedroom. “I need to get my tools replaced, the Parasprites ate clean through them. Couldn’t find a smith’s shop willing to sell a full set of tools here, so I’ve got a train to Amberhoof tomorrow at noon.”

“Amberhoof?” Lyra asked. “Aren’t they a mining town?”

“Yep,” Lapis replied. “And they’ve gotta keep their picks in working condition somehow, right? I’m betting they’ve got good smiths there - or, barring that, they know where I can find good smiths, and I end up taking a night’s vacation for some advice.”

“I guess that makes sense,” Lyra said, as she and Lapis entered his storefront. “I mean, who wouldn’t want to take a vacation to a dusty mining town on the edge of the real, actual Badlands?”

“Most tourists,” Lapis replied absently. “So, if I’m lucky, I shouldn’t have too much trouble finding myself an inn for a few evenings. You need practice picking vacations, Lyra.”

“Oh, like you’ve had practice, Mr. Worka-” Lyra cut herself off, and Lapis lurched to a halt midway through his door, his saddlebags hanging in the air above his back.

Lyra’s voice was softer, quieter when she next spoke. “Sorry. I wasn’t thinking, and it just slipped out, and… I’m sorry.”

“It’s alright,” Lapis said, not looking back. “You found out less than a week ago, there’s no way it’d just sink in instantly.”

He stayed quiet as he slung on his saddlebags and stepped through his doorway, Lyra following behind after a second or two. Lapis didn’t speak, doing his best to get lost in his thoughts - truth be told, he was more likely to find decent equipment in Canterlot. Unfortunately, there were two potential problems with any planned visit to Equestria’s capital, and both of them were alicorns. Lapis was already taking enough of a risk by living in the same village as the Element Bearers, he didn’t need to add “frequenting the home turf of pony goddesses” onto his list of mistakes.

Besides, Lapis thought, if what Bon Bon’s said about Canterlot is right, I definitely won’t find anything there for cheap. And buying stuff that’s too expensive for my own good is… well, not the reason I’m in this situation, but it’s definitely the reason I’m so desperate to get out of it-

“So,” Lyra asked, her tone hesitant. “How’s Nikki doing?”

Lapis frowned. “She’s doing alright - actually, she was a huge help yesterday, when I took care of all the roofing jobs.”

“Oh, did she actually help you fix stuff?”

“Not so much,” Lapis said, shrugging and grinning over his shoulder. “But she did a great job of pointing out patches that I’d missed. You spend enough time sitting on rooftops, I guess you start noticing their little details.”

Lyra snorted. “Sounds like my kinda job!”

“I mean, if you work for birdseed, sure,” Lapis replied. “Speaking of jobs, I wonder how Bon Bon’s handling those desserts?”

“…you hayseeded, mud-rolled horseapple shish-kebobs!” Bon Bon snarled, glaring pure venom down at the baking sheet she’d just pulled from the oven. “Oh hi, Lapis.”

Lapis, who had only walked through the door to Bon Bon’s kitchen a few seconds before, quickly unfroze. So that’s what cursing sounds like here. “Hey, Bon Bon. I’m guessing the baking’s not going so well?”

“Hmm, I don’t know,” Bon Bon said, lifting the baking sheet onto the counter. “Why don’t you tell me?”

Lapis peered down at the criss-crossing spiderweb of long, shimmering black strings across the baking sheet, then cocked his head in confusion. “Well, you’ll have to cut them apart, but they look like they’ll be okay licorice strings to me.”

“They’re supposed to be gumdrops,” Bon Bon said, her tone flat.

Lapis’ jaw didn’t drop, but it did manage to lower his mouth into an astonished grimace. “…Alrighty then, I guess that’s a ‘no.’ Anything I can do to help?”

“Yes, actually,” Bon Bon said, offering him the baking sheet. “Could you get this mess scraped out of here while I look over my recipe again? Lyra should be able to help you, if-”

“Nope,” Lyra said, rummaging around in the cabinets. “I’m getting those lemon meringue cookies done, and then I’ve got to go practice for the concert.”

“No worries, I’ve got it covered,” Lapis said, levitating the pan over to his side, then briefly glancing around Bon Bon’s kitchen in search of a sink. The kitchen was a surprisingly stark room, with pinkish-orange polished-granite counters brightly lit by a line of windows on one wall, and by a trio of simple, elegant hanging lanterns on the opposite side. The cabinets were a pristine white, their tops covered with an assortment of esoteric cooking equipment - Lapis recognized a flour sifter adapted for hooves, and what looked like a stack of oddly-shaped mini-muffin pans, but the function of the rest eluded him. Just about the only exception to the cleanliness was Bon Bon’s sink, one side of which had a stack of still-dripping dishes, likely rinsed just before Bon Bon had opened the oven.

Lapis made his way to the sink, turned on the hot water, and started taking a brush to the pan. “So, what do you think went wrong?”

“Well,” Bon Bon muttered, burying her nose in a large binder on the counter, “I think what happened is that gumdrops melt and burn when you stick them in the oven for two minutes, instead of letting them sit and harden for eight hours. You know, like what ponies usually do, when they’re given more than four hours’ warning in advance.”

“Hey, I got the same amount of prep time you did,” Lyra said, getting out a mixing bowl and a series of measuring cups. “Honestly, I think Mayor Mare wasn’t really planning this concert in the first place.”

“Sounds about right,” Lapis said, frowning down at the baking pan in the sink, then pulling the dish-brush away - only to find strings of tarry burnt material trying to glue the two implements together. “Uh, Bon Bon, you got a dehydrator or something?”

“Hit that sheet pan with soap, baking soda, and a little bit of salt,” Bon Bon said, without looking up from her recipe. “Also, a what?”

“A dehydrator,” Lapis said, setting the sheet pan down and looking through the cabinets for baking soda and salt. “You know, a machine that blows hot air over stuff, helps dry it out faster than letting it sit out in the sun?”

Bon Bon snorted, then walked over to a set of several jars full of colored liquid sitting on the counter. “Sounds like exactly what I need, but no. Although, now that you mention it, letting a pan of these sit in the sun for two hours might do the trick. …The baking soda’s under the sink, and the salt is in the top cabinet all the way to the right.”

“Thanks,” Lapis said, heading over to the far right cabinet.

“Don’t mention it,” Bon Bon replied, pulling a fresh sheet pan from a drawer and beginning to dab droplets of the thick, colored liquid from the jars onto the pan. “So, what’ve you been up to?”

“Well, yesterday I got the last of the backlog taken care of,” Lapis said. “And this morning, I’ve been packing.”

Bon Bon glanced sharply in his direction. “Where are you headed?”

“I’m taking a quick trip over to Amberhoof. I need to get a set of replacement tools for my smith’s shop, and besides, it’s about time I got the lay of the land a little,” Lapis explained, sprinkling the odd mixture that Bon Bon had recommended onto the sheet pan.

Bon Bon sighed, her ears flicking backward. “And here I thought you were taking a vacation.”

“I guess I am, if you look at it right,” Lapis said, glancing out the window. “Especially if I end up not being able to find somewhere to buy the smiths’ tools-”

Lapis’ eyes widened as he looked out the window - then, he dropped to his knees, quickly levitating the sheet pan back down into the sink and getting a telekinetic grip on his mask.

Bon Bon looked over, then rolled her eyes as she walked over to look out the window. “Pinkie?”

“Pinkie,” Lapis said, sliding the mask onto his face and standing to watch her pass by. Strangely, Pinkie wasn’t bouncing - instead, she was proceeding at a pretty standard pace, pulling behind her an oversized wooden wagon. Inside the wagon was what looked, at first glance, like an equally oversized fabric model of an unusually yellowish brain. On further inspection, it revealed itself to be nothing more than an enormous and especially rumpled pile of off-white fabric, seemingly all one sheet.

“What is it, you think?” Lyra asked, walking up to join them a second or two later.

Lapis shrugged. “Not sure,” he muttered, his voice muffled by the paper. “Whatever it is, it almost looks big enough to be a hot air balloon.”

“Well, it can’t be that,” Bon Bon said. “She’d need about three different licenses. A tarp or something, maybe?”

“Maybe,” Lyra said, watching as Pinkie rounded the corner and vanished from sight. “Who knows? It’s Pinkie. C’mon, these sweets aren’t gonna cook on their own!”

“Speak for yourself,” Bon Bon muttered, picking up the sheet pan full of colorful droplets and heading for the front porch.

The meringue cookies, it turned out, only took one hour to make to the gumdrops’ four. For Lapis, that meant he got to head back to his house and resume packing earlier than he’d expected.

Unfortunately, that meant he got time to think. What was sticking in his mind, as he tried to determine what would be a reasonable number of bits to take with him to Amberhoof, was part of his conversation with Lyra earlier that morning. Lapis couldn’t remember the last time he’d had trouble saying “anypony,” and that was the problem.

I’m getting too comfortable here, he thought, as he levitated the bag of bits into his suitcase. Way, way too comfortable.

He’d been here for over a month now, it only made sense that he would be starting to acclimate. But still, when he’d had that weird, Happy-Sauce-induced dream a few days ago, he hadn’t dreamed he was a human, or even a dwarf. No, he’d dreamed he was still a unicorn. And that worried him.

I figured acting had something to it, he thought, closing his suitcase and heading back into the kitchen to fix himself some lunch, but this is insane. Sure, I want these ponies to think I’d always been one of them, but… this is unnerving.

I’ve got to get out of here, fast. Because if I don’t…

Lapis dumped some beans into the small pot on his stovetop, following it shortly afterward with some vegetable stock and diced bell pepper. I knew Lyra was a musician, but I don’t think I’ve ever heard her play before. It’ll be nice to get a little bit of a break, assuming none of the Element Bearers are there. And even if they are, then as long as it’s not Pinkie, I should be fine. She’s the only one who knows what I actually look like…

…How much do the rest of them know?

Lapis paused, midway through stirring the concoction on his stove. As far as I know, Rainbow Dash and Rarity know nothing. Rainbow Dash, I’m positive about - whenever she’s in the sky, I haven’t gone within half a mile of her, and I sure haven’t seen her at ground level.

Pinkie Pie… she knows what I look like, but she doesn’t know what my name is, what I do, or where I live. And as long as the mask keeps working, I can keep that up.

Twilight knows that I can do Mend-Alls, but I don’t think she knows what I look like. On top of that, she definitely doesn’t know my name, or what I do. But, unfortunately, she’s got reasons to find out.

Applejack knows my name and my job, but she doesn’t know what I look like. Big Mac’s got a general profile of me, though, so if she decides to enlist his help, then I’m probably screwed.

Fluttershy… what’s she been up to, anyway? I don’t think I’ve seen her or Rarity at all, yet. I’m not worried about Rarity, but if one of Fluttershy’s animal friends spotted me…

Lapis hesitated. …Or if Nikki blabbed. But… no, there’s no way she’d do that.

…Probably. I’ll have to ask. Lapis sighed, then scraped a roughly-chopped tomato off his cutting board and into the pot. I hope she’s doing alright. It felt like she was pushing herself a little bit, yesterday.

After giving his pot a few minutes to cook down, Lapis lowered a spoon in and tasted his work - then frowned, considering. For vegan chili, it’s not bad, but it’s missing something.

Lapis glanced over at his windowsill. There, gleaming in the sunlight, sat the jar of Happy Sauce. Its smiley face was just as ominous as ever, and its contents still shimmered with all seven colors of the rainbow.

Hesitantly, he opened the jar, floated it over to the pot of chili, and slowly, carefully added a single drop. Then, after stirring the pot and giving all the flavors a few minutes to mingle, he raised another spoonful to his lips.

It wasn’t perfect, not quite. Even as diluted as it was, there was no extra flavor to the Happy Sauce - there was only a dull burn of spice, and a vague aftertaste of honey. But it was close enough.

“…Don’t worry about it, Mr. Fennel,” Fluttershy said, smiling down at the small, fuzzy creature in front of her, “of course I’m happy to help you and your pups.”

The critter that she was addressing, Mr. Fennel the rat, considered himself a sensible sort of animal. He kept himself tidy, he didn’t go sticking his nose into places where it didn’t belong, and he tried, generally, to ask for help no more or less often than he needed it. Mr. Fennel wasn’t entirely sure whether any of these principles was responsible for his doubting Fluttershy at her word, but he certainly didn’t believe her - he had yet to meet any creature, whether rat, pony, or anything else, whose idea of “fun” was lying in front of the same cluster of golf-ball-sized holes in the grassy fields outside Ponyville until all four of his cubs got bored with scampering through the abandoned burrow beneath. And if he ever met a creature besides Fluttershy who was willing to do so for three hours, well, he’d do his very best to keep in touch.

All of this was too much to say inside of a few seconds, though, so Mr. Fennel instead squeaked, “No, I mean it - if there’s a thing I can do for you, even one, then just let me know and it’s done!”

“Oh, thank you,” Fluttershy said, smiling again. “There’s nothing I can think of right now, but if I come up with something, I’ll be sure to-”

Fluttershy trailed off as a brown-and-red bird passed by overhead, trilling out a few brief notes of song midair. “Oh my. Please be careful with those tail feathers, Connie Bird, they’re only just molted.”

The bird flew onward uninjured, and Fluttershy shook her head, smiling to herself. “Young birds,” she murmured, and Mr. Fennel nodded in sympathy - he and his cubs lived below the floorboards of a house in the village, and the pair of lovebirds that lived on the roof of the same building kept getting into high-pitched disagreements over whose turn it was to do what.

Fluttershy paused, her brow furrowing. “…Well, there was one teensy little thing I’ve been meaning to ask,” she said, turning back to Mr. Fennel. “I was just wondering, have you seen anypony in Ponyville who’s friends with a pigeon named Nikki?”

Mr. Fennel cocked an eyebrow, then scratched behind his ears. “Well, it’s a darn shame, but I’m afraid I can’t say I have. But I can keep an eye out, if you’d like-”

“Oh, no thank you,” Fluttershy said. “It’s nothing important, I was just wondering…”

She kept talking, but Mr. Fennel wasn’t listening. He’d cut off as soon as he spotted another bird - this one was a pigeon, with a distinct greenish patch at the crook of one of his wings. The pigeon wasn’t looking at either Mr. Fennel or Fluttershy, but he was there, and Mr. Fennel wasn’t quite sure when he’d gotten there.

“…and ever since then, I’ve just wanted to make sure her wing was better, and that she wasn’t getting too worked up at all over her friend getting hurt,” Fluttershy finished. And as she said the word “wing,” Mr. Fennel realized he had seen a pony with a pigeon, just the day before. There’d been a unicorn stallion with a creamy-yellow coat and a blue mane up on the rooftop next to the house where Mr. Fennel lived. The unicorn had been fixing up the thatch on the rooftop, and the pigeon had been flying around the roof, pointing out little details, or else stretching one of her wings as if it ached.

Mr. Fennel opened his mouth to say so, but at that moment, the green-patched pigeon on the rooftop looked down at him. It wasn’t a glare, or even a stare; it carried no hatred or malice. But nonetheless, it was very apparent that the pigeon was watching Mr. Fennel, and - from the way he held eye contact - that he wanted Mr. Fennel to know he was being watched.

Slowly, Mr. Fennel closed his mouth, then shook his head. “Well, I’ll do my best to keep an eye out,” he squeaked. “Can’t make any promises, though - I’m sorry to say I spend most of my time trying to keep out of ponies’ sight. Anyhow, I’d best get back home pretty soon…”

Mr. Fennel was a sensible animal. He didn’t stick his nose into places where it didn’t belong - and if pigeon business wasn’t such a place, he didn’t know what was.

The walk to Town Hall turned out to be shorter than Lapis had expected - and, once he got there, it turned out the hole in the wall had finally been repaired.

He made his way inside, and found that the space was already starting to fill up a little - there weren’t any chairs, but there were a fair number of cushions scattered across the floor, and several of those had already been taken up by some of the town’s denizens. Aside from the cushions, most of the building still wasn’t decorated - there were curtains on the stage, and a small booth next to the stage that had a trombone sticking out of its side, but nothing like the Summer Sun Celebration’s banners and garlands were anywhere to be seen.

Still, the place looked like it was ready for a show. The ponies who were there were already chattering away, as were the ones filing in through the door, and a few of the musicians were already practicing just outside the booth. It didn’t take long for Lapis to spot Bon Bon, and he filed through the rows of cushions to join her in the front row. “Lyra holding up okay?”

“Oh, hey Lapis,” Bon Bon said. “She was nervous, but she always is before her concerts, and she always plays well anyway. How about you, how was the rest of your packing?”

“Went by pretty fast,” Lapis replied, taking a seat. “I was able to find a way to use the Happy Sauce, though - turns out, one drop in a saucepan of chili works out just fine.”

“Not better than chopping up another pepper, though,” Bon Bon said.

“Yeah, well, I haven’t been able to find any spicy peppers in the market stalls. Apparently, all the ones I know are imports from afar.” Lapis grimaced as he realized his ears were flopping backward, and he deliberately flicked them back upright.

“From… far enough?” Bon Bon asked, an odd weight in her tone.

It took Lapis a second to understand what she meant, but he shook his head. “No. Not from anywhere I’ve heard of. Argentineigh got my hopes up for a second, but only for a second.”

“Well, that’s no good,” Bon Bon grumbled. “I poked around in the library, since I knew you’d rather not go there, but… well, no luck. Wherever Amareica is, it’s not on any Equestrian maps I’ve been able to find, which means it’s either deep in a polar region, or else overseas. …What was the weather like there?”

“Nowhere polar, we have all four seasons,” Lapis said, grinning. “Summers were something else, though. We had thunderstorms every month, and tornadoes during half of them.”

“And nopony lodged a complaint with the local Weather Factory?” Bon Bon asked, cocking an eyebrow. “You must’ve really loved storms there.”

“I know I do,” Lapis said, smiling. “Not as much as my grandpa, though. Every time it would storm, he’d get this ancient, beat-up rocking chair and sit out on the porch, just to have a drink and watch the thunderheads blow in. Said he liked how the wind felt, like there was a power in it.” He snorted as another memory flashed in his head. “One time, some random robin got blown onto his face, and the wind pinned it there. He barely seemed to care. Just grabbed it off, dropped it over the side of the porch, and that was that - as long as it didn’t spill his beer, he didn’t mind.”

“Sounds almost like mah Gramps,” a voice rumbled over Lapis’ shoulder, and a few seconds later, a large red stallion with an orange mane stepped into Lapis’ field of view. “Fancy meetin’ you here, Lapis, Bon Bon.”

“Hello, Big Mac,” Bon Bon said, cocking an eyebrow at Big Mac. “Didn’t take you for a music lover. When did you get here?”

“Not too long ago,” Big Mac said, taking a seat on the empty cushion beside Lapis. “You two been here long?”

“Not so much,” Lapis said, “but Bon Bon and Lyra have been getting ready all morning. Lyra’s one of the players, and Bon Bon… hey, that reminds me, did the gumdrops turn out okay?”

“You mean the fruit leathers?” Bon Bon asked, holding up a small bowl filled with multicolored, rubbery-looking strips.

Lapis snorted. “Guess I do. Sorry, Bon Bon, I thought setting them out in the sun would work.”

“I was trying to make gumdrops,” Bon Bon explained to Big Mac, setting the bowl back down. “But I only got four hours’ warning, so haste made waste. How about you, anything exciting going on at Sweet Apple Acres?”

“E-yup,” Big Mac said. “Applejack and Ah finally got that apple cellar all full up. An’ what that means, is that the cider prep’rations are officially underway.”

Suddenly, Bon Bon was leaning toward Big Mac, her head almost over top of where Lapis’ lap would be, if he had one. “Does that mean cider season is starting soon?”

“Nope,” Big Mac chuckled. “It just means prep’rations are starting. There’s a long way to go yet before cider is served.”

“Oh,” Bon Bon said, returning to her seat. “Oh well. Anyway, the show should start pretty soon, so I’m going to go ahead and pass out the lemon meringue cookies. Either of you want one?”

“E-yup.”

“Sure,” Lapis said, and a few seconds later, Bon Bon had passed out the results of her work, and was wandering up and down the rows of cushions with her handouts, while Lapis and Big Mac crunched away at their cookies.

As soon as Bon Bon had gotten more than a few cushions away from them, Big Mac glanced over at him, then looked back over at the stage. It was at roughly this time that Lapis suddenly remembered the circumstances under which he and Big Mac had last met, and realized that, if Big Mac wanted to press him for further information, now was his opportunity. He needed to preempt the conversation, in a direction that wouldn’t give Big Mac time to bring up Applejack, now.

“So, how’s the family?” Lapis asked.

…Wait.

“Hm? Oh, they’re doin’ alright,” Big Mac said. “Granny Smith wasn’ happy that the old barn came down, but Ah think she was glad to help the new one come up. Hopin’ to make somethin’ else that’ll last a long while, Ah imagine. That reminds me, how’s that barrel o’ cider that Bon Bon an’ Ah delivered to you?”

“Oh, it’s great stuff,” Lapis said, trying not to visibly sag with relief. “I’ve been having a mug or two in the hotter evenings, and it’s really been helping me cool off. You gonna make any more of the stuff a little tart on purpose?”

Big Mac shook his head. “Nope. By the time we get to sellin’, it won’t be long before winter, and most folks around here want their mug of cider to warm them up by then. …Though, Ah might ask Applejack what she thinks about makin’ a few tarter barrels, and savin’ them for the spring.”

Uh, how about no? “Whoa, don’t worry about it,” Lapis said, quickly waving his hooves. “It was just a thought, you don’t have to go to that much trouble.”

Big Mac gave him an odd look, then grinned and rolled his eyes. “…Alright, Ah’m sorry, but Ah gotta ask. About how bad was it when you and Applejack firs’ met, that y’all’re so keen on avoidin’ her now?”

Lapis froze. Shit. Well, here we go. “…Uh, Applejack?” he asked, trying to stall for time and come up with some idea of escape - however, he only continued to draw a blank. “We’ve never actually met, it’s just that-”

“Just that, as soon as Ah said somethin’ about mentionin’ you to her, your ears about fell off the back of your head,” Big Mac said, fixing Lapis with a stare that, though friendly, was nonetheless firm enough to stop Lapis from attempting to object or right his ears. “Now, Lapis, Ah know Ah’m not the Apple bearin’ the Element of Honesty, but Ah’ll be honest with you anyhow - Ah know you’re avoidin’ my sister, and she knows it too. It ain’t my business, but all the same, Ah’d appreciate the courtesy of an explanation.”

Oh fuck, he’s really pushing. “It’s… really not that I’ve met her anywhere before,” Lapis said, rubbing the back of his neck with a hoof as he tried to block out the sound of his pulse in his ears. “I lived in Ponyville for three days before I even saw her, and even then, that was during the Summer Sun Celebration, back when she was keeping things under control in front of Nightmare Moon. We haven’t ever talked, and honestly, I don’t think she’s ever even looked at me.” …I mean, not unless I’ve slipped up somehow.

“She’s got as much work on her plate as I do, probably more, and we’re just… part of different crowds, I guess,” Lapis finished. “She saves Equestria, and I fix broken tables, and we… we just keep to our own, y’know?”

During the whole of Lapis’ speech, Big Mac remained silent, scrutinizing him with a calm, calculating stare. Only once he was done did Big Mac speak. “…E-yup, Ah think Ah do. ...‘Pologies for proddin’ you, Lapis, Ah won’t ask about it any further.”

“Thanks,” Lapis sighed, and this time, he really did sag with relief. Whatever I just said, it must’ve made some sense. “And I’m sorry for any worry I’ve caused you, or Applejack- Oh, welcome back, Bon Bon,” he said, turning to face Bon Bon as she sat down. “How’d the cookies go over?”

“I think I have some new customers,” Bon Bon began, grinning. And as she continued, Lapis remained so intent on the conversation that he entirely missed Big Mac looking between Lapis and Bon Bon, then turning a firm, careful, evaluating eye upon Lapis, not looking away until the curtain parted on the stage a few moments later.

“Fillies and gentlecolts,” Mayor Mare said from atop the stage, and Bon Bon cut herself off mid-word as she, Lapis, and Big Mac turned to look. “I must report that there are, once again, a number of missing musical instruments… and that number is zero.”

The crowd quickly tittered, and Mayor Mare smiled, then continued. “Therefore, it is my great pleasure to announce that the First Annual Ponyville Players’ Performance will begin shortly. Please take your seats, and, if you’ve brought very young foals or fillies, escort them to the cry-room of the hall located just to the left of the main door. Thank you, and please enjoy the show!”

The Mayor left the stage to a smattering of applause, and a few ponies started making their way toward the back of the room as the lights began to dim. Lapis settled back into his cushion, and waited for the show to start.

A pegasus with a trombone stepped onto the stage first, and began to play a few moments later. He had an initial few squeaky notes, but after that, it was all smooth sailing. Lapis was surprised to find Big Mac nodding along with the music.

As the song went on, however, Lapis found himself unable to focus on the music, his mind instead wandering once again to the matter of where, exactly, Earth was relative to Equestria. Bon Bon seemed to believe that America was at least part of the same planet - and considering how Lapis had explained that he was lost without noting that he was a lost human, she’d jumped to the most likely conclusion.

Lapis couldn’t believe the same, however. Outside of the TV show, he’d never even heard of Equestria before, meaning that if it was on Earth, then there was an enormous cover-up being done. And erasing multiple continents and species from the maps and textbooks, let alone the existence of magic, would require a massive, internationally-collaborative effort from world governments - a few of which had, in Lapis’ eyes, recently demonstrated themselves to be far too incompetent to achieve any such thing.

The trombone player finished, and a unicorn with a banjo took his place as Lapis started to think further out. It could be that Equestria was on another planet, and it might even be possible that that planet was in the same solar system - Lapis had only taken one astronomy class, but from what he’d remembered of it, he knew that there might be a mystery planet in the solar system that the astronomers hadn’t found yet. They knew it was there, they could see the tiny wiggles that its gravitational pull was exerting on other objects. But, when they did the math on where the planet should be and trained their telescopes in that direction, nothing was there.

That theory has… a lot more than two problems, Lapis thought. But it definitely has two I can think of. It doesn’t explain the TV show, and it doesn’t explain Princess Celestia raising the sun. So, further out.

If Equestria were in another solar system, then it would allow for Princess Celestia’s movement of the local sun. But it still wouldn’t explain the TV show, barring that it was a signal somehow broadcast from Equestria that had been deemed safe to show to the public at large, while simply omitting the context of its origin… wait, no, the show definitely had a production team. Huh.

Lapis’ gut began to sink as the banjo player finished, and as a weathered-looking Earth-pony with a harmonica trotted out onto the stage, he thought even further out.

The concept of alternate dimensions… well, it was fun, but Lapis had never really believed it. The first time he’d ever given it serious thought, he’d been reading a book, and he still remembered his exact train of thought: If alternate dimensions exist, in which anything we can imagine is real, then that means there is, somewhere in infinity, a parallel universe where mysterious and powerful inter-dimensional forces beyond current scientific understanding or counteraction will cause a black hole to spontaneously manifest in this universe, two inches above this book, in three, two, one.

Shortly after having this thought, Lapis had noticed that he was still alive, and he had then taken this fact to have some minor implications for the concept of the multiverse, and decided to divert his studies toward a more practical application of physics. Now, though… now, he wasn’t so sure.

It left a lot of room for how magic existed here, but didn’t exist on Earth. It might also explain he could’ve gone from the inside of his university’s sciences library to the middle of the Everfree Forest in an instant - maybe there’d been a machine being tested in some nearby lab, that had functioned or malfunctioned just in time to push him in just the right direction on just the wrong axis of reality.

Or I’ve died, and been badly reincarnated. Or I’m asleep, and this is all just a really long, really weird dream. Or I just don’t have enough information, and trying to make any theories right now is useless, Lapis thought as the harmonica player finished, stepping offstage to thunderous applause. I need to find out more. And for that, I need equipment, and for that I need to get to Amberhoof.

Lyra was up next. She looked a little nervous as she stepped out onto the stage, her ears briefly attempting to flap backward. Then, from Lapis’ right side, Bon Bon shot her a wave. Lyra paused, then recognized Bon Bon, and all at once, her face lit up in a grin, and her lyre floated up to her side. Her first notes were like diving into warm, clear water, and the first chord was like discovering a shoal of dolphins waiting to play. She kept on, and just for a second or two, Lapis forgot everything else.

For now, I need to focus on what’s right here, right now, he eventually decided, as Lyra’s music floated through the air. Even if it doesn’t get me home right here and now, even if it makes no progress toward showing me the way home, what I’m doing right now is mostly an effort of will. Until that changes, to keep it up, I need ways to keep my strength up. To relax, to catch my breath, to not drive myself insane with guilt and obsession. If I don’t schedule time for equipment maintenance, then the equipment will schedule that time for me - and as over-analytical and panicky as I am, I’m definitely a piece of equipment that I can’t afford to replace.

Lyra’s performance wasn’t the last, but it was the last that Lapis cared about.

“…Alright, Lyra, I figured you were good,” Lapis said, as he, Lyra, Bon Bon, and Big Mac left Town Hall not long afterward, “but there was no way I could’ve guessed you were that good.”

“E-yup,” Big Mac said. “Y’all had formal training?”

Lyra giggled. “It’s just my special talent. …And practice. Lots and lots of practice.”

“Don’t I know it,” Bon Bon said, smirking as she pulled up alongside Lyra. “But it definitely paid off. Good job, Ly-Ly.”

“Thanks for being here, BB,” Lyra said, briefly bumping up against Bon Bon’s side. “Oh, and thanks to both of you, too,” she added, looking over at Lapis and Big Mac.

Oh. Good for them. “Don’t mention it, it was honestly my pleasure,” Lapis said, waving a hoof.

Big Mac, meanwhile was regarding both Lyra and Bon Bon with a surprised look. “Uh, pardon mah askin’,” he said, “but are y’all a couple?”

Lyra, Bon Bon, and Lapis all briefly glanced at Big Mac, then at each other.

Lyra was the first to speak, a grin slowly spreading on her face. “Um, yeah. We kinda have been basically since we met.”

Big Mac’s brow furrowed in confusion, and Lapis could practically see the gears turning in his head. “But…” he said.

Bon Bon cocked an eyebrow, the start of a crease forming on her brow. “That isn’t going to be a problem for you, right?”

“Nope,” Big Mac said, shaking his head. “Ah’m just surprised at mahself, that’s all. Y’all’ve lived here for four years now, how come Ah never figured it out?”

“Well, I haven’t lived here for as long as you have,” Lapis said, “but they don’t really seem big on PDAs to me.”

Lyra cocked an eyebrow at Lapis. “Uh, what?”

“Public displays of affection,” Lapis and Bon Bon said simultaneously.

Big Mac nodded. “E-yup, Ah suppose that’s true… now, hold on a moment!” he said, turning to Lapis. “You knew, too?”

Lapis shrugged. “Until just now, not really, but I had guesses. I only ever saw them with each other or me, for one thing, and neither of them ever mentioned going out with… well, anypony. Plus, they share a house. Far as I was concerned, it could be that they weren’t interested in the dating scene at all, they didn’t want to talk about it with me, or they were a couple. Whatever the case, it wasn’t my business, so I didn’t ask. …What, what’s with the look?” Lapis asked, seeing that Lyra was cocking her head at him.

“You totally could’ve just asked, y’know!” Lyra said, grinning. “We would’ve been happy to tell you, Lapis, you didn’t have to play Sherlock Hooves.”

Lapis waved a hoof. “Might’ve been rude. Besides, I usually overthink things anyway, so don’t worry about it, Big Mac,” he said, turning towards the confused stallion. “There’s no shame in not having the thought cross your mind, you’ve got enough stuff to deal with on the farm.”

“Like cider season,” Bon Bon said, perking up. “Remind me again, when does that start?”

Big Mac chuckled. “Not yet. Sometime ‘round middle or late fall. Y’know, if you are that keen on gettin’ things goin’ sooner, y’all are welcome to come over an’ help sort through the apples…”

“I think I’ll pass,” Bon Bon quickly said. “If the reception at the concert was anything to go by, I need to start baking a lot of lemon meringue cookies.”

“E-yup,” Big Mac said. “Though, Ah might not make quite so many of the fruit leathers.”

“Nah, those were my fault,” Lapis said as they walked on. “So, this morning, Lyra asked me to head over and help Bon Bon with making some gumdrops…”

Lapis kept talking, recounting how he’d tried to help Bon Bon with her job, and once again he missed it when Big Mac fixed him with that careful, evaluating look. And this time, though it was hard to say what, something within it had slightly shifted from its previous place.

To Lapis’ surprise, they ended up heading back to his own house, instead of Lyra and Bon Bon’s. Part of the reason for this became clear when, as soon as they were through the door, Bon Bon immediately retrieved a mug from Lapis’ kitchen and helped herself to the barrel of cider on his counter.

Lapis, meanwhile, settled for trying to fix some food, and wound up cooking some hayburgers. He still only had two chairs, but Lyra went digging through the pile of knick-knacks she’d donated, and shortly emerged with four small, plush throw pillows that served just fine for seats. Big Mac made himself useful, setting the table and heating up a single large plate of fries to go with the burgers. And Bon Bon…

“There you are,” Lapis said as he brought the burgers to the table, turning to look as Bon Bon stepped out of the closet. “What were you up to down there, anyway?”

“Taking inventory,” Bon Bon said, walking over and taking a seat. “Lapis, I looked over all your broken tools, and… well, I know you’ve already bought the tickets, but I don’t think Amberhoof will have the supplies you need.”

Big Mac looked up as he bit into his burger, his eyebrows rising in confusion, and Lyra quickly jumped in to explain. “Lapis is going to Amberhoof for a few days. The Parasprites ate his smithing tools, and he wants to buy new ones.”

“Pretty much, yeah,” Lapis said, before turning to Bon Bon. “And yeah, you’re probably right. What I really want to know is what address to send a letter to, and what I really want to get is a day or two away from Ponyville. I’ve been running myself ragged taking care of the backlog, and a little bit of scheduled vacation will do a lot more good for me, and for Ponyville, than another week of unscheduled vacation.”

Big Mac swallowed, then spoke. “Ah’m a little surprised, Lapis. Ah took you for a carpenter-pony more than a smith-pony.”

“Oh, I’m definitely no blacksmith,” Lapis said. “What I’ve got is an artificier’s workshop, and even then, at best, I’m only dabbling right now. Although…” Lapis frowned, considering. “I mean, I could probably bang out one or two dozen nails in an afternoon. It can’t be that hard, right?”

“I’d get an apprenticeship first,” Bon Bon warned, smirking. “There might be more to it than you think.”

“Probably,” Lapis conceded, and he raised his burger off his plate. “Being able to just stick the broken bits back together is a big help, though.”

Lyra cocked her head, swallowing her own food. “Wait. So, I’m probably wrong, but if something breaks while you’re just making it, then… even if you fix it, doesn’t that mean it’ll probably break when you use it, too?”

“E-yup,” Big Mac said.

“Yeah,” Lapis agreed. “Guess I’ll have to learn more about metalworking in general, not just artifice. Then again, I’m sure Amberhoof has some pretty decent smiths.”

Bon Bon sighed. “Well, why not just go to Canterlot? You know, the magic and arts capital of the world? Full of more craftsponies than anywhere else in Equestria?”

“Because it’s not cheap, and it’s packed,” Lapis said. “I’m sure the ponies in Amberhoof will know their way around metalworking, it’s their livelihood. Besides, they’re not making stuff for rich ponies to hang on their walls, they’re making tools and equipment, and that means they need sturdy more than pretty. And… well, that lines up with my priorities.”

“Alright, okay,” Bon Bon said, raising her hooves in surrender. “Just wanted to make sure you had good reasons… Hey, Big Mac, save some fries for the rest of us!”

The rest of dinner went by quickly, and Lapis headed to bed as soon as all his guests had departed. Next morning, Lapis was just hanging up a sign on his notice board when Nikki landed on his shoulder. Lapis booped her beak, she cuffed him back, and they were off to the station, Lapis’ suitcase floating by his side.

When Lapis got there, Bon Bon was there to see him off. “…Lyra wanted to come too,” she was saying, “but she’s not feeling well. I think she must’ve caught something at the concert.”

“Well, tell her I said goodbye,” Lapis said, as they walked up to the side of the train. Lapis had initially been thrown off by the fact that the train looked like some kind of enormous, steam-powered pastry, but he’d gotten over it pretty quickly. “I’ll be back the day after tomorrow, so with any luck, she’ll be feeling better by then.”

“Hopefully,” Bon Bon said, as one of the conductors opened the door to a passenger car. “…Hey, be careful out there, alright?”

“In Amberhoof?” Lapis asked, grinning and cocking an eyebrow. “Bon Bon, it’s just another town. What could po-” He cut himself off mid-word.

“You almost said it,” Bon Bon said, smiling.

“Almost,” Lapis said, shaking his head. “If Pinkie asks, I’ve moved to Albuquerque. See you, Bon Bon!”

“Albu-what?” Bon Bon asked, as Lapis stepped onto the train. “Alright, sure. See you, Lapis! See you, Nikki!”

Lapis made it halfway down the train car to his seat, then glanced over at Nikki. “You, uh…” he said. “You know I’m heading out of Ponyville for a few days, right?”

Nikki nodded.

“And you’re sure you’re coming with?” Lapis asked. “I didn’t buy any birdseed, you know.”

Nikki nodded again, smirking.

“Alright, just making sure,” Lapis said, and he filed into his seat, then turned to watch out the window as the train pulled out of Ponyville. He waved back to Bon Bon, who was waving from the station, until the train rounded a bend and the station was out of sight.

I’m definitely settling in now, he thought. And you know what? Maybe that’s not so bad.

Meanwhile, back in Ponyville, the sign hanging on Lapis’ notice board gently fluttered in the breeze. “On Vacation, Back on Saturday,” it read.

Suddenly, a shadow fell across the board as a bubblegum-pink blur zipped to a halt before the sign. A few moments passed, then the pony groaned and stomped her hoof.

“And I’d just finally gotten ready!” Pinkie Pie said. She sighed, then shut her eyes and took a deep breath.

When next she opened her eyes, they were twin pale-blue slits of determination. “I’ll get you, you ninja-pegasus, you,” she muttered. “I’ll get you yet.”

Author's Note

Hey, guys, and welcome back! Short chapter, I know - this one just kept finding new ways to dig its heels in.

I think part of that was because I was up for trying a new method of outlining, and this was the result. I kept feeling like I already knew everything that was going to happen, so writing it would be easy and therefore something I could leave until later… and, well, here we are. Later. So, there’s the pantser side of the plan-vs-pants writing argument in action (and no, I’m not a pantser. I run a hybrid method, one that involves a structured series of bullet-points, filled in by a large chunk of… exploration.)

Another part of it, though, is that I kept trying to keep an eye on this chapter from different angles. A couple of you have been asking for romance, and that isn’t off the table, but I’m not going to split up a perfectly good canon couple in order to achieve it. And yes, Lyra and Bon Bon are very much canon (though I’m sure that, if they do have canon pet names for each other, they’re better than what I came up with.) On top of that, as someone who’s probably straight and not terribly interested in putting his sexual orientation to the test, I was a little nervous about writing openly lesbian horses. Apparently, you can always tell when queer characters are written by straight authors, and I spent a fair chunk of time trying to figure out why, until eventually I decided to just stop stressing and write already.

Don’t worry, though, I’m excited to get started on the next one. I was just hoping to write a bit of a slower chapter first, one that didn’t revolve quite as much around something Lapis was up to - Ponyville has more than one pony with agency, or at least that’s the impression I’m trying to give off. Plus, I felt a little bad for never giving Lyra a chance to perform - I know I didn’t really give her much of a scene, but it’s always hard to do music justice via the written word. Still, Lapis needed to develop a little before heading to Amberhoof, and - considering Background Pony, an excellent story that likely needs no further introduction besides “go read it,” - I felt Lyra was just the pony to play a tune and help him along!

Anyway, that's all for now. See you in the next one!

√100: Treading On Hooves

On the opposite side of the Everfree Forest from Ponyville, there began a hotter portion of Equestria that housed two towns: Little Loosa and Dodge City, both of which had their own train stations. Further south from both of these settlements was a range of wide, snowcapped mountains, the Macintosh Hills, forming a kind of sickle shape that divided Equestrian civilization from the Mysterious South. In the curve of this sickle there was a valley, and in this valley were the Badlands.

From a distance, the easiest parts of the Badlands to see were by far its mountains - broad, flat-topped pillars of rusty-orange sandstone, their sides worn smooth enough to glisten like glass in the searing sunlight. One in particular, a narrow spire with a bulging, rounded top, could be seen even from Dodge City, looming over much of the orange landscape from the rough center of the Badlands and peeking between the Macintosh Hills like a nosy neighbor peering over a fence. If it were on Earth, the mountain would be named something like the Rooster or the Devil’s Rod, but the inhabitants of Dodge City had cleaner minds than that, and so they referred to it as the Spoon.

It was in the shadow of the Spoon, packed into the pass that connected the Badlands to Dodge City, that Amberhoof sat - a collection of baked-pale, scraggly timber buildings crammed together and atop each other higgledy-piggledy in a way that generally resembled a thick, sprawling wall of piled wood, though there was debate among travelers of whether that wood looked most like it was charred, rotting, or driftwood. As Lapis walked the final dozen or so yards down the road that led between the nearest train station and his destination, he saw the true nature of the Badlands: subtly-rolling expanses of reddish-orange sand that was just a little too coarse to be called dust, but which was still light enough to get whipped up into opaque, pore-clogging clouds by every little breeze. Hazy wisps of the sand were blown to and fro about the streets of Amberhoof, the solitary pedestrians familiar enough with the gusts to squint and turn their heads at the appropriate time.

Lapis, however, wasn’t accustomed in the same way, and so he settled for keeping his head down as he approached one of the locals, a fit-looking, well-groomed Earth-pony mare with a coat that was of a similar color to the sand. “Hey, sorry to bother, but would you happen to know where I could find an inn for a night or two?”

The stranger looked up, apparently surprised, examining Lapis up and down with a startlingly-bright pair of leaf-green eyes. She considered for a moment, then spoke. “Head down that road, go up the second staircase on the right, then turn right again and keep going until you see the door with the yellow paint.”

“Thanks,” Lapis said, the stranger nodding as they turned and headed in opposite directions, Nikki remaining perched on Lapis’ back as he headed down the street. What the stranger had meant by staircases shortly became clear - Amberhoof, having far less open space than Ponyville, was built far more vertically, with multiple levels of buildings and houses crammed together atop and against each other so that walking through the town made Lapis feel like a mouse exploring a pile of cardboard boxes. The second staircase on the right led up to a winding, fenced alcove of a walkway, and Lapis wondered whether he was walking on somepony’s roof as he hung a right.

This place has gotta be a logistical nightmare, he thought, peering up at one of the few patches where the sky wasn’t obscured by one of the buildings’ floors. There’s no way all this was planned. Are all the chimneys interconnected? The plumbing, the… whatever-passes-for-magic-wiring? If your chimney gets blocked, does clearing it out mean taking out a wall in your upstairs neighbor’s living room?

Despite however randomly it had been built, Amberhoof felt as sturdy as if it had been carved from stone. Nothing swayed or creaked in the wind, and the timbers thunked with reassuring solidity beneath Lapis’ hooves as he pushed open the yellow door and stepped into the inn.

The proprietor of the building was a pegasus, a trim stallion with a pale yellow coat and a carefully-groomed, dark reddish mane. He, too, took a second or two to look Lapis up and down before speaking. “…Welcome to the Hole-in-the-Wall Inn. How long do you plan on staying?”

“Two nights,” Lapis said, tuning out Nikki as she briefly fluttered for balance atop his head. “Not looking for anything fancy, though - a room and a bed should be plenty. What’re the rates?”

The innkeeper listed off a few rooms along with their rates, adding that breakfast was included for all of the rooms. Lapis thought for a second, then took the cheapest of the bunch. A small, heavy stack of bits made its way between Lapis’ saddlebags and the other side of the counter, and the stallion took a small clipboard out from beneath the counter - then smirked and rolled his eyes. “Oh, almost forgot. I’m Kacha, Kacha Neil. And you are?”

“Lapis Print,” Lapis said, “and this is Nikki.”

“Lapis… Print,” Kacha said, speaking from the corner of his mouth as he scribbled on his clipboard. “Hey, nice, another pigment! My dad was a dyemaker.”

“…Mine was an engineer,” Lapis lied. “But I guess naming me ‘blueprint’ would’ve been a little too much.”

“Well, at least you’re not ‘Dipstick,’” Kacha said, and Lapis snorted as the innkeeper resumed scribbling. “…And that’s two nights, in room double-oh-three, and… done! Here’s your key.”

Kacha grabbed Lapis’ key ring from beneath the desk, and Lapis took it at once. “I’ll show you to the right doorknob. So, what brings you here, Lapis?”

“Broken tools,” Lapis said, following the pegasus down the hall. “Smithing tools, actually. Big swarm of magic bugs chewed through my usual set, and I figured that if you’ve got them here, it’s cheaper than going to Canterlot.”

“Oh, you’re a smith, huh?” Kacha said, glancing back toward Lapis. “I never would’ve guessed, your Mark makes it kinda hard…”

“Nope,” Lapis said. “No, I’m a repair-pony, the metalworking is really more of a side job.” Out of curiosity, he glanced at Kacha’s Cutie Mark, and found it to be a simple picture of a tightly-made bed.

“I get that,” Kacha was saying. “I’m not really an artist, but I paint a little as a hobby. It’s not great, and my friends at the bar give me some trouble for it, but it’s all in good fun.”

Lapis shrugged. “Mine only found out about two weeks ago. I keep kinda busy - only repair-pony in town, I wind up throwing Mend-Alls at everything, so we didn’t talk as much as we liked. I think I got them worried, though - they’ve been checking in with me a lot more than usual, lately.”

“Aw, that sucks,” Kacha said. “I mean, that they’re worried. Good that they’re touching base… and, here we are!” He stopped in front of a sturdy-looking wooden door, then gestured toward the knob. “Alright, so once you’re done, just be sure to check in that key sometime before noon. Any later than that, and I won’t be at the desk. Sound good?”

“Got it,” Lapis said. “It was actually kind of a long train ride over here, so I was thinking I should turn in.”

“Heard that one before,” Kacha said. “Trust me, that walk over here from Dodge City gets everypony ready for a rest stop. Probably why this town’s built here… anyway, I’ll see you in the morning!”

“See you!” Lapis said, waving to Kacha as he turned and walked away down the hall. Then, carefully, he inserted the key into the doorknob, turned it, stepped into the room, and shut the door behind him, locking it tight. Then, he turned to survey his suite.

His room wasn’t a large room by any stretch, but it definitely felt more cozy than cramped. There was a bed in the opposite corner of the room, which had fluffy, inviting blankets and a small, broken chest sitting at its foot.

Nikki took off of Lapis’ head, perching atop one of the bedposts, and Lapis looked around the room as he set down his suitcase - the silence was almost stunning. He made his way over to the bed, then flopped down atop it.

The mattress was just as comfortable as it looked, and as he sunk down into the blankets, he grinned. I get to sleep here for two nights.

For two nights, I get to go to sleep without worrying about sidestepping the Element Bearers. For two nights, I don’t need to worry about where my mask is, or what escape route to take if I spot Twilight walking down the street.

From deep in his chest, Lapis let out a long, slow breath, gradually allowing his limbs to go utterly limp against the cool, soft sheets as he began to sink into a deep, soothing sleep…

…Except something was nagging at him. His brow furrowed, then he groaned, sat up out of bed, and levitated the chest into the patch of light that was pouring in through the window.

It was a long, low chest, stretching maybe five feet wide, two tall, and two deep. Lapis wasn’t sure what wood it was made of, but it was a deep, rich brown color, almost black, contrasting the washed-out, sun-bleached timbers that made up the rest of Amberhoof. The chest was scuffed in a few places, and there was a single scratch that ran the length of its front side, but it was mostly in good condition. The exception was one of the slats of its sturdy, reinforced lid, which had broken into the rest of the chest - it looked as if someone, maybe an overexcited colt, had jumped on the chest and put their hoof through the lid.

Easy fix, Lapis thought, gripping the broken pieces of the slat in a telekinetic field. There were a few small, dry scraping noises as the halves of the board ground against the other boards of the chest, until finally, they came together, and-

Lapis winced as his Cutie Mark suddenly seared with heat, magic yanking on his horn hard enough that he stumbled before a sudden weight of fatigue slammed into him. His aura grew to encompass the whole of the chest, brightening to the same candlelight hue it had been in the quartz, and Lapis barely had time to shut his eyes in preparation. Even through his eyelids, the flare of light was strong enough that he winced and looked away, Nikki squawking in surprise from atop the bedpost.

When Lapis slowly, cautiously opened his eyes, the chest looked far better than he was expecting - the slat was repaired, as was every scrape and nick on the chest’s surface. Even the long scratch down its length had vanished, as if it had never existed at all.

“…That’s probably fine,” Lapis muttered. …Actually, no, what the hell was that?! Did I accidentally level up my repair skills, or something?

Lapis glanced around the room, spotted a sheet of paper sitting on a desk by the corner, and floated it over to his side. He tore it in two - then, after a moment’s hesitation, he touched the two halves back together, and the sheet of paper repaired itself with nothing more than the usual burst of warmth and flash of light.

Okay… so it wasn’t that. Maybe this chest was just a special case or something. Lapis hesitated, then decided to leave the matter until the morning. After all, he thought, climbing back into bed, I’ll have all the time in the day to do it with.

A smile spread across his face as he sank back into the pillow, and finally, he relaxed.

Meanwhile, in Ponyville, Twilight Sparkle was standing next to the Carousel Boutique. The light of the evening sun cast a fiery orange tint on the map and compass she held before herself, and while it could have been equally responsible for the narrowed squint of her eyes, there was a slight crease in her brow that spoke of worry. Rarity was standing nearby, peering intently over Twilight’s shoulder.

“…Darling,” Rarity was saying, “I’m really not sure how to say this, but you’ve lived in Ponyville for well over a month, now. Are you sure you still need a map to get to where you’re going?”

“What?” Twilight asked, raising an eyebrow. “Oh, no, it’s not that I’m lost or anything, it’s… here, take a closer look at this map.” Twilight levitated the map nearer to Rarity, who craned her neck to see as Twilight raised a hoof to point.

“I drew this map as part of a damage report for Mayor Mare earlier this week,” Twilight said. “After the Parasprite attack, somepony had a Harmonic Cascade, and she wanted me to figure out what it had impacted. See this red circle? That, minus this smaller circle around your store, is the affected area.”

Rarity gasped. “Oh, my! Well, it’s a lucky thing my boutique wasn’t touched… although, I have been meaning to get that embroidery cabinet straightened out a bit.”

Twilight gave Rarity a flat look, and Rarity’s eyes widened innocently. “What? Darling, of course it’s a tragedy that somepony was so affected by the Parasprites that they experienced a Cascade. But when a wave of magical cleaning, organizing and lawn-mowing affects all your neighbors, while simply passing your establishment by, of course you must start wondering whatever you might have done wrong!”

“Rarity, it would have also straightened your mane,” Twilight added. “Along with any crooked teeth you may or may not have.”

Rarity paused. “Did you just say ‘teeth?’”

“Yes, I said ‘teeth,’” Twilight said. “When I interviewed Derpy Hooves, she said it felt like some big pair of pliers had just grabbed her teeth by the roots and jammed them back into place. Saved her some dentists’ bills, but… well, it definitely didn’t feel great.”

Rarity winced, shutting her eyes and clamping a hoof to her mouth. “Never mind,” she murmured.

Twilight carried on. “Anyway, when I was doing that damage report for the Mayor, I realized about halfway through that she hadn’t mentioned who was the responsible pony. I wanted to drop by and have a chat with them, but never seemed appropriate to ask the Mayor directly, considering that… well, I wouldn’t want ponies knowing it was me, either. When I drew the map I realized the circle was centered right here-” Twilight touched a hoof to the map again “-but, when I tried to check the residency records, there were no documents under this address.”

Rarity nodded sympathetically. “I’m sure Town Hall was an organizational nightmare, darling. But if you already knew what address to visit…” Rarity turned to face Twilight, touching her own hoof to the map. “…then why the navigational aids?”

Twilight glanced briefly to the side, her ears flicking back. “…Well, I’ve never been there, and it’s Spike’s day off, so… I’d rather not get lost.”

Rarity fixed Twilight with a skeptical grin, then spoke as Twilight blushed. “It’s quite alright, darling. Ponyville wasn’t nearly as much of a planned endeavor as Canterlot must be, so of course you might have some trouble getting around. Now, let me see…” She briefly inspected the map. “And you said this small circle was the Carousel Boutique, so that means this is… just across Cantering Boulevard from Acorn Route!” Rarity nodded, then started toward the central street of Ponyville. “Come along, darling, it’s just a few minutes’ walk!”

A few minutes later, Twilight and Rarity came to a stop in front of a short, squat building with dark red walls, a corkboard, and a large, yellowed glass window. Around the door was a piece of navy trim with three points at its tip, and on the corkboard was a single, small note. “‘On Vacation, Back on Saturday,’” Rarity read aloud. “Hm. Well, that’s disappointing.”

Twilight sighed. “It’s a good thing I prewrote a note.” She lit up her horn, and after a moment or two, a slim, dense-looking book with a folded slip of paper tied to it set itself down on the building’s doorstep.

Rarity examined the book and the note, cocking an eyebrow. “Twilight, darling, may I ask what exactly you’re leaving for this pony to find?”

“Just a book on Cascade theory,” Twilight said. “After I had my first one, I… wasn’t looking to have another, so I did some research on how they worked, and how to prevent them. That’s the book that worked for me, and that’s basically what the note says, along with what parts of the book I’d recommend paying attention to.”

“As well as some well-wishes, I’d assume?”

“And those,” Twilight said, turning away from the building and starting back toward her library.

Rarity beamed as she followed. . “How thoughtful of you, darling! Why, I’m sure whichever pony lives there will be positively delighted for the aid…” She glanced briefly at the corkboard, and her face lit up. “Now wait just a moment, I think I know who they might be!”

Twilight paused, cocking an eyebrow. “You do?”

“Of course, darling. That is the Red Repair Shop, home to the only repair-pony in Ponyville,” Rarity said, gesturing to the building. “He only moved in recently, but he’s been keeping quite busy. Why, just the other day, Amethyst Star was saying to me that she must’ve stuck at least a dozen or two notices onto that very board by now!”

“The only repair-pony in Ponyville?” Twilight asked, cocking an eyebrow. “Well, that can’t be practical. Has he been keeping up?”

“Splendidly, as I hear,” Rarity said. “In fact, one or two ponies have claimed his special talent is Mend-Alls, and that he uses those to do most of his work.”

Twilight’s brow furrowed, and she slowed to a stop as she walked down the road. “Mend-Alls…” She gasped, then shook her head. “…It might be, but I need more proof. Rarity, can I ask you something?”

Rarity frowned. “Of course, dear.”

“Thanks,” Twilight said, igniting her horn - and a moment later, a muddied brown cloak appeared beside her head with a flash of purple light and a snap of wind. “Do you think you could tell me who sold this?”

Rarity levitated the cloak over to herself, wrinkling her nose at the dirt. “Well, not ordinarily, no. But as I do try to keep track of all the fellow outfitters in Ponyville, I believe this particular cloak is the design of one Mr. Rough Cut, proprietor of the Stallion’s Saddlebag store.” Rarity turned the hood inside-out, revealing a semicircle of frayed, feathery fibers. “It’s a hallmark of his to sew the hems in with their ends exposed - he claims it gives his wares a rugged look, though I would be called sloppy if I attempted the same.”

“The Stallion’s Saddlebag,” Twilight muttered. “Rarity, could I ask you to lead me there tomorrow? I think I need to see if Rough Cut remembers who he sold this cloak to.”

“Of course, darling,” Rarity said, “but may I ask what for?”

“You remember Trixie and the Ursa Minor?” Twilight began. “Well, the day after that fiasco, when that giant rainstorm was coming down, I got myself marooned on the water tower chasing after somepony.”

Rarity’s eyebrows shot up. “What?”

Twilight blushed again, her ears flopping back. “Well, it’s kinda embarrassing. So this pony showed up at the library wearing this cloak, trying to return some overdue books, but… well, for some reason I thought he was up to no good. Maybe I was tired from the whole Ursa-Minor thing, or maybe I’m just overprotective of my books, but I started interrogating him, and he started running.”

Rarity cocked an eyebrow. “Did he?”

Twilight nodded, her ears flopping back. “And I chased him. We ended up at the top of the water tower, and I… might’ve accidentally dropped him off the side of it.” Rarity gasped, and Twilight sighed. “I managed to catch him, but when I did, I broke the ladder of the water tower and ran out of magic, so I was stuck up there in the rain. I would’ve been in for a long, cold night if they hadn’t fixed the ladder.

“When I got to the bottom, their cloak - this cloak - was hung on a stick, and by the time I got back to the Golden Oak, they’d already dropped off their library books and disappeared,” Twilight finished. “And since then, I’ve been trying to find them and apologize, but I never even saw what this pony looked like. Even Pinkie didn’t know!”

Rarity slowly nodded, then grinned. “Oh, so it’s a mystery then? Well, you can count me in, darling!”

“Thanks, Rarity,” Twilight said, heaving a sigh of relief. “I know it probably seems silly, but I’ve been feeling really guilty about the whole thing-”

“Oh, it’s not silly at all, Twilight,” Rarity said. “Why, there’s intrigue about every corner of this situation! A mysterious, hooded stallion, unknown even to Pinkie Pie, clever or desperate enough to evade the most magically talented unicorn in all Ponyville after a chase through the pouring rain - and who yet cares enough to risk his escape by refusing to leave her stranded? Why, if it were me, I wouldn’t have stopped thinking about it since the moment it happened!”

“…Uh-huh,” Twilight said, raising an eyebrow as Rarity half-swooned. “I think you missed the part where I almost dropped him off a water tower.”

“Oh, I most certainly did not,” Rarity said. “And that makes his willingness to put the ladder up all the more intriguing, Twilight - even in your adversarial positions, neither of you was willing to leave the other in danger. Separated by mystery, bound together by mutual care…”

Rarity went on, and Twilight lowered her head, her ears flopping back in exasperation as she let out a long, slow sigh. “I’m just trying to say I’m sorry,” she muttered.

Lapis woke up in a cool, soft bed, without any repair jobs or potential risks to the safety of Equestria to worry about, and grinned a wide, content grin.

Slowly, he sat up in bed, yawning and stretching his forelegs above his head. He opened his eyes, and found that the sun was just barely beginning to rise, a few wispy clouds on the horizon glimmering like gold in the first rays of dawn.

I wonder if that other stretch still works? Lapis raised his forelegs, then twisted them together, so that they crossed over each other just before his… are they still called elbows? Eh, whatever. Then, locking his hooves around each other, he pushed his arms away from his chest, as was rewarded with a sensation like a taut ribbon on his upper back.

“There we go,” Lapis muttered, and he began to angle his forelegs up and down, keeping them twisted together so that the taut ribbon was drawn up and down the length of his back. He wasn’t sure where he’d learned the stretch from, but wherever he’d gotten it, it was good - even now, as a pony, it still managed to get the small, cramped muscles between his upper spine and shoulder blades, stretching out some knots of tension that he normally wouldn’t be able to reach.

Lapis ran through a few other stretches until he felt completely relaxed. Then, he climbed out of bed and took in the rest of the room, grinning as he spotted Nikki still asleep on the bedpost - and paused as his eyes landed on the wooden chest. Was that facing the bed last night? It probably was.

He headed out the door, then made his way down the hall toward the main room. Kacha wasn’t there, but there was a clean, empty wooden bowl, a spoon, and a note, which read: Had to head out, breakfast by fireplace - Kacha.

Lapis glanced over at the fireplace, and found a small, steaming pot of oatmeal sitting atop the nearby flagstone, the handle of a ladle poking out the top. He served himself, then made his way back to his room, grimacing at the blandness of the stuff.

“Nikki,” Lapis said as he opened the door - then he froze, staring down at the wooden chest again. How is that facing the door now? I could’ve sworn it was aimed at the bed when I left the room.

Lapis eyed the chest. It’s probably nothing, but…

Carefully, he grabbed the sheet of paper he’d mended last night, and lifted a single, gooey oat from his breakfast. Then, using the oat as an improvised adhesive, Lapis stuck the sheet of paper onto the front side of the chest. As an afterthought, Lapis took a pencil and drew a smiley face on the sheet of paper.

A questioning coo came from the side of the room with the bed on it, and Lapis glanced upward to find Nikki giving him an odd look.

“Probably nothing,” Lapis said, shoving another spoonful of oatmeal down his face. “C’mon, wee’f gotta go find a smi’f.”

Nikki rolled her eyes, then took flight and landed on Lapis’ shoulder, and Lapis turned and left the room, casting one last look at the chest before he shut the door.

Once he was outside, Lapis again found that asking pedestrians for directions was a surprisingly effective method of getting to a smith’s shop - though, he noticed something else strange. Every time he managed to get one of the locals’ attention, they’d always seem surprised for a second or two, looking Lapis up and down as if they expected him to suddenly jump them. As Lapis pushed open the door to the smith’s shop, he was trying to convince himself that it was probably just his imagination. I mean, I’m always a little surprised when random people walk up to me. Maybe it’s the same thing?

“Hello?” Lapis called, stepping into the building. “I’m looking for a consultation, anypony in here?”

“Coming!” a voice called from the back of the workshop, and a second later, an ashy-gray unicorn with an easygoing grin and a pale-orange mane and tail stepped into the storefront. “Welcome to the Copper Coil Forge, my name is Firefly Tap, and I will be your consultant for this visit! What brings you here?”

“Hey, Firefly,” Lapis said. “My name is Lapis Print, and I was wondering where I could procure a set of small-scale smithing tools - basically, whatever I could use for artifice.”

Firefly’s eyes widened, and he cocked his eyebrow. “A full set of artificier’s tools? You sure?”

“Full set,” Lapis said. “Honestly, I’m not expecting you to actually have it, I just wanna know where to send a letter.”

Firefly shrugged, and the grin slid back onto his face. “Well, normally that’d be any one of the ten competing brand-names in Canterlot, but something tells me you’re here to avoid paying for heavy shipping costs.”

“That’d be ideal,” Lapis said.

Firefly nodded. “Alright. So first off, let me see if I can save you a couple hundred bits real quick: what kind of artifice are you planning to do? A couple big things, a few little things, a whole lot of everything, what’s going on?”

“Probably not as much as I’d like,” Lapis said, “but still a fair amount. Basically, what I’m looking for is a starter’s kit, minus the workshop - I’ve already got the forge, gems, and metal, what I’m missing are the tools.”

Firefly’s eyebrows shot up. “A whole workshop? Forge, anvil, grindstone, wire brush, workbench?”

Lapis nodded. “The whole workshop. I started renting a house, and didn’t realize the workshop came with it until after I was paying the bills.”

Firefly laughed. “Gosh, lucky you! I wish all my equipment had just fallen in my hooves that way.” He cleared his throat, then continued. “So, the good news is, that’s two-thirds of the cost gone. The bad news is, the other third is still there, so getting some tools will set you back by a couple hundred bits, most of which are the gem-carvers. …Although, if you can find a guidebook at your library or something, that might knock off a fair bit,” Firefly added.

Lapis winced. “Yeah, I had a guidebook, but a swarm of magic bugs ate half the words. A lot of it’s still there, but the sections on runescribing and gemcarving are basically gone.”

“Oh, that’s it?” Firefly asked, cocking an eyebrow. “Well, it sounds like all you need is a runic cheat-sheet, and a crash course on the basics… Tell you what, actually, I’m not too busy today. How much spare time you got?”

“All day,” Lapis said, blinking in surprise, “but you don’t have to-”

Firefly raised a hoof, revealing a simple, gem-studded bracelet, and shook his head. “Don’t worry about it. Like you said, you’ve got a whole forge, and it’d be a shame to let it go to waste. So settle back, and let me give you the run-down.”

Lapis sat down, and Firefly levitated the bracelet off his hoof, setting it on the counter gem-side-down. “Alright, so what do you know about the different types of gems?”

“Not a lot,” Lapis admitted. “I don’t know what amber or emeralds do, but I tested the rest on my workbench, and wrote those down.”

Firefly held up a hoof again. “Whoa-whoa-whoa. All the gems? Including diamond?”

“Well, yeah,” Lapis said, grimacing. “I’m still not sure what the diamond did, but it got me all dizzy for a second or two.”

Firefly facehoofed, then looked up at Lapis with the same grin. “Okay. So, maybe don’t mention that to anypony else. For artificiary purposes, diamonds are linked to mind magic, meaning you need about thirty different permits to put even a spark of magic into a diamond. Even then, you mention diamonds and artifice in front of the wrong cop, you’re getting arrested.”

“Oh,” Lapis said, his eyes widening.

“Yeah,” Firefly agreed. “So, no touchy the magic diamond, the Princess no likey. Anyway, emerald is growth magic, and amber’s an extra-important one - amber does metamagic. And then, you know, ruby is heat, topaz is light, sapphire is cold, amethyst is pull, and quartz is either raw or push magic, depending on which wizard you ask.”

“…Right,” Lapis said, though he’d previously thought that sapphires just conjured water. Encouraging condensation actually makes a lot more sense… huh.

“So, runescribing,” Firefly continued. “You know how with regular magic, you gotta think about casting it, and also want to cast it? The whole intent-and-will speech your Basic Casting teacher drilled into your head a million, billion times in middle school?”

Lapis nodded, and Firefly went on. “Well, for artifice, that ‘will’ part - the part where mana decides to do stuff because you want it to do stuff badly enough - is taken care of when mana gets dumped into a crystal. What runescribing does, is the ‘intent’ part - it tells the magic what to do. So here’s why that works.
“When you’re carving a rune, you shouldn’t just be scratching out a funny shape,” Firefly explained. “You should be thinking, real hard, about what that rune represents - the concept, the action, the result, whatever. And, if you do it right, you end up magically imprinting your intent into the rune, so that the rune winds up affecting mana the same way that the thought behind it would.”

“Imprinting your intent,” Lapis said, raising an eyebrow.

Firefly nodded. “Yeah, it sounds a little weird, but it works. Magic, emotion and intent all like to stay together, you know,” he added, seeing Lapis’ growing skepticism. “It’ll work for any spell, even if you don’t mean for it to imprint on stuff. You cast the same spell in the same place often enough, all the extra wild intent will pick an object in the area and seep into it, bringing along spare magic and even loose emotion, until-” Firefly blanched and cut himself off. “Well, uh, maybe not emotion, so much. …Okay, look, I might be doing some research, but keep it on the down-low, yeah? Plagiarism sounds like ‘plague’ for a reason.”

Lapis snorted. “No worries, and good luck with the patent. …You think that’s how the Everfree Forest happened, though? A whole bunch of… wild intent, coming together into one place?”

Firefly shook his head. “No, that was Discord. But it was way long ago, so for all we know, he was an extra-large clot of intent, and the weird goat-thing in all the storybooks is just an artistic liberty. But anyway…

“Runescribing is that process, but done on purpose in a structured way. Carving the actual rune is just an exercise in focus, to make sure you’ve got the intent for long enough that it sticks - the only reason artificiers use standardized runes is so that we can understand each other’s work.” Firefly snorted. “And hoofwriting. That’s a big one. It’s the imprinted intent that matters, and it’s responsible for most of the telling mana what it’s allowed to do, when and where it’s allowed to do it, yadda, yadda, you get it. The exceptions are the different types of gem, you need those to determine what school of magic is involved.

“So, here’s what that looks like in action,” Firefly said, gesturing to the bracelet on the table. “First off, you tell me, what are these gems?”

Lapis frowned, then leaned closer to inspect the bracelet. There were five of them, arranged in a stretched sort of plus shape, connected to each other by thin, gleaming strips of copper. “Well, the left one is a ruby, and the right one is a quartz, but I don’t have a clue what the three gray ones in the middle are.”

Firefly grinned. “Not bad. The middle three are smoke amber, and they’re the reason this town is called Amberhoof. They do the same metamagic as true amber, almost as well as true amber - but we’ll get to that in a second.

“Basic design of a magic item is pretty standard: iron core to pull mana in, copper coating to channel the mana into the gems, aluminum studs to make sure the mana only flows through the gems one way. In this case, that order is from the ruby, through the smoke amber, to the quartz. With me so far?”

Lapis nodded, and Firefly continued. “So. This bracelet’s what we call an active charm, which basically means that once it’s charged up, it just sits there looking pretty until something wakes it up. And the ruby is what makes that happen. This ruby’s got two big runes on it: an affect inverter, and an effect inverter. Put together, they make what’s called an ‘eye gem,’ which - when it ‘sees’ a trigger - spit-takes out some of the mana inside of it. Since it’s a ruby, this eye gem looks for heat, and all the other little runes on it just say how much heat counts as a trigger, how close that heat has to be, other specific stuff.

“When it spits out magic, that magic takes the path of least resistance - and thanks to some runework, those paths are these three copper bands,” Firefly said. “These little short ones, connecting to the top and bottom smoke amber, are runed to accept quick, weak pulses of mana. And this big long one, that connects all the way to the quartz, is runed to accept a slow, strong pulse. That’s the one that carries the power for the spell, but it won’t happen until later. Right now, it’s these two smoke ambers that matter. Still with me?”

“I… think so,” Lapis said. “The ruby is an eye, when it sees enough heat in a close enough spot, it releases mana. Most of that mana heads to the quartz slowly, but the rest heads to the smoke ambers quickly.”

“Exactly,” Firefly said. “Alright, this is where it gets complicated, so hang onto your rump. Amber, and smoke amber, do metamagic - which is a fancy-pony word for ‘magic that affects magic.’ The top and bottom smoke ambers take their pulses of mana, and convert them into a little bit of information, a little bit of intent. The bottom one is runed to read… the location, of the trigger, that set off, the charm’s eye gem,” Firefly said, narrowing his eyes in concentration. “And the top one reads… the location, of the pony, who is wearing, this charm. Specifically, the point of their body that’s closest to the trigger. Those two pulses of intent get spit out at about the same time, and make their way into the middle smoke amber, which takes the midpoint between those two points in space, and spits that location out toward the quartz. Still with me?”

Lapis shut his eyes and concentrated. “The smoke amber converts magic into information, and processes that information - for this charm, it picks the space that’s exactly between the trigger and the closest part of the pony to the trigger.”

Firefly grinned. “Right on the bits. Now, here’s where the magic happens.” He pointed to the quartz. “At the same time that the location intent from the smoke amber hits the quartz, the big pulse of mana from the ruby also hits the quartz. This provides all of the will and some of the intent to cast a spell - the quartz knows where to do something, and it has the power to do it, but it doesn’t know what to do. That’s where this last rune, a spell rune, comes in.

“This,” Firefly said, pointing to a simple carving of a bursting bubble on the quartz, “is the rune for a very simple kinetic spell: ‘Pop.’ You pick a spot, you go through the incantation, and everything near that location gets pushed outward. The smoke amber provides the location, the ruby’s stores provides the power, and when both of those are put together…”

Firefly put the bracelet back on, then suddenly swung the hoof with the bracelet on it to the side, toward a lit, cracked lantern on his counter. The ruby sharply glowed, and then there was a bright flash of green light and a snap like a bursting balloon-

The lantern shot across the counter, falling sideways, and Firefly’s hoof was pushed in the opposite direction. Firefly ignited his horn, and the lantern was engulfed in a coat of acid-green light as he stood it back up.

“Pop,” Firefly said, shooting Lapis a wide, smug grin. “I love this thing. If I had a bit for every time it’s saved me from scorching my hoof on the forge, I’d be rich.”

Lapis laughed. “No kidding. You got one of those for sale?”

“Sure don’t,” Firefly said, settling down on the other side of the counter. “But once you get those tools? You can make one. Now, here’s the thing - normally, those tools would set you back by three, four hundred bits. But it’s not every day that somepony actually listens when I rant about this stuff, and it just so happens that my cousin Scorpio recently gave me his old spares. So, I may be inclined to let you haggle me down a little…”

“Well, that was unproductive,” Twilight said, stepping out of the Stallion’s Saddlebag.

“Twilight, dear,” Rarity said, smiling. “I’m afraid I wasn’t really expecting Rough Cut to remember. Why, I remember every single dress I’ve ever made, but I fear I certainly cannot recall everypony who’s bought one!”

“But he even had the receipts,” Twilight said, “and he never bothered to write down this stallion’s name?! Just the date! Of all the information to leave out, how do you not record the customer’s NAME?”

“Well, at least Rough Cut recalled what else his customer bought,” Rarity said. “So really, I think you’ve learned something quite valuable in your search. All you’ll need to do is wait until the first snow, and if Mr. Print should emerge from his store wearing blue, you’ll know he was the responsible pony.”

“Blue…” Twilight muttered. “…Blue! That’s it! C’mon, we need to talk to Pinkie Pie.”

Lapis Print emerged from the Copper Coil with his saddlebags considerably heavier - sure, he was out two hundred and eighty bits, but the weight of the assorted hammers, tongs, and cutting tools of various degrees of precision was well more than enough to make up the slack.

And honestly, I should’ve paid Firefly just as much for his explanation, Lapis thought, as he went down a flight of stairs and stepped onto the ground-level streets of Amberhoof. It’ll easily be just as important for my future endeavors with artifice.

There were a few slanted rays of sunlight pouring through the few gaps in the town’s strange layout, but the street was shadowed enough that it felt almost like an indoor environment, Lapis’ fellow pedestrians stepping into and out of easy visibility as he proceeded back along the route toward the inn. As he walked, however, he started noticing a few small, strange details.

For one thing, almost every piece of furniture he looked at was broken in some way. He passed a table and a set of chairs, all of which had one leg that was broken off early, and propped upright by either a rock or a smaller chunk of wood. Even the table had a large chunk taken out of its edge. One or two broken furnishings would’ve been odd, but if it was every single one…

Wait, no, Lapis thought, as he spotted an unbroken table at the corner of the street, by a shop that appeared to be selling hay dogs. That one looks fine. It was a simple, but elegant design, a wooden circle with four legs, and it was made from the same type of dark, rich wood as the chest back at Lapis’ room in the inn.

Looks nice, Lapis thought as he rounded a corner. I wonder where that wood’s coming from.

Continuing his walk back, though, Lapis began to feel worried. For some strange reason, he was starting to feel unwelcome - it was as if the other ponies on the street wanted him gone, or else they wanted too much for him to stay.

It’s the looks, Lapis realized, as he passed a greenish Earth-pony, who fixed him with a brief, almost startled-seeming examination before hurrying in the opposite direction. Do I have something on my face, maybe? Lapis paused for a second or two, leaning on a dark wooden chair as he checked his reflection in a window, but the glass was too uneven - his reflection was far too distorted for him to make out anything of value.

Frowning, Lapis climbed down off the chair, absently giving it a once-over. This chair, too, was brand-new and unbroken, and it seemed to be made entirely of the same dark wood as the chest - a deep, almost dark-chocolate brown that seemed to have a faint red tint. The more Lapis looked at it, the more he began to feel unsettled, until eventually he turned and walked in the opposite direction.

Am I having a panic attack? he began to wonder, dread rising in his gut as he turned another corner and came within sight of the staircase that would take him to the inn. Amanda always said they felt like this, like boss music you couldn’t hear was getting closer. Lapis shivered, ignoring another strange look from one of the passersby, and began to climb up the staircase - then stopped, halfway up.

Across the street, there was another piece of dark wood furniture - a pristine, unbroken end-table, between two other end-tables with chipped drawers, not far from the door of a flower shop. And though it was too far away for Lapis to make out for sure, he could almost swear he saw the edge of a piece of paper, flapping gently against the backside of the end-table.

Probably fine, Lapis thought, hurrying up the stairs, doing his best to ignore the startled expression of the Earth-pony stepping out of the flower shop. He pushed his way inside the inn, brushing past the empty counter, and made his way to his room - then, just outside the door of his room, he froze, suddenly remembering that the strange wooden chest was just inside. If that thing’s moved, then forget checking out - I’m leaving now.

Slowly, Lapis pushed open the door - and to his relief, the dark wooden chest was precisely where he’d left it, the note of paper remaining just where he’d left it. Lapis let out a sigh of relief he hadn’t realized he was holding in, stepping the rest of the way into the room and shutting the door behind him. Okay. All good.

Nikki landed on Lapis’ bedpost again, shooting Lapis a worried look, which he waved off. “Probably just paranoid. Don’t worry about it - I’m sure it’s just been a while since things have gone my way.”

It would’ve made more sense for Lapis to store the tools inside the chest, at least for now. That didn’t stop him from cramming as many of them into his suitcase as he could and keeping the rest inside his saddlebags, casting one final suspicious look at the chest before he left to find some food.

“Pinkie?” Twilight called, as she stepped through the doors that led into Sugarcube Corner. “It’s Twilight and Rarity. Are you home?”

“Oh, hey, Twilight!” Pinkie chirped, poking her head out of the kitchen. “You girls picked a good time - there’s three hundred cupcakes in here that need sprinkles in here, right now! Here, catch!”

“Whoa!” Twilight said, telekinetically snatching two jars of gray sprinkles out of the air just before they hit her face. “Pinkie, slow down, we need to ask you about somepony.”

“Well, ask about them in here!” Pinkie said, sticking her head back through the doorway. “Most of these aren’t gonna sprinkle themselves!”

“‘…Most?’” Twilight asked.

Rarity shook her head warningly. “It’s Pinkie,” she murmured, and Twilight sighed, then walked into the kitchen.

Inside, Pinkie was busy applying coats of blue frosting to several trays of creamy white cupcakes, which Twilight looked at only for a second or two before beginning to apply sprinkles. “So, Pinkie, I was wondering if you’d made any progress on finding-”

“Can you make this a little quicker, Twilight?” Pinkie asked. “I’ve really gotta get these done by eight, or else it’ll take way too long to heat up my liquid propane burner.”

“Okay,” Twilight said, beginning to shake the sprinkles a little faster, Rarity cocking an eyebrow and picking up the other jar. “Anyway, this is about-”

“Sorry, Twilight, but it’s really gotta be faster than that,” Pinkie said.

Twilight sighed, then shook the sprinkles faster still. “It’s about-”

“Just a teensy-tiny, eeny-meeny-weeny-bit faster, please?” Pinkie said. “But don’t worry, I’m listening!”

Twilight groaned, then pulled the lid off both her own sprinkle jar and Rarity’s. She floated the sprinkles directly out of the jars, spread them into a thin sheet over the remaining unsprinkled cupcakes, then let them go - and just like that, the cupcakes were now sprinkled.

“Wow, Twilight!” Pinkie said, looking over the sheets of pastries. “Great work! I should ask you for help with cupcakes more often, you’re sprink-tacular!”

“Can I please just ask you the question now?!” Twilight asked, putting her hoof down and looking around at the trays of cupcakes. “What are all these even for, anyway?”

Pinkie giggled, holding one of the cream-and-blue cupcakes up, the thin gray sprinkles glinting in the light of the afternoon sun. “Can’t you tell? They’re for the new repair-pony in town, silly!”

Twilight and Rarity both froze, looking over at each other before turning back to Pinkie. “Wait, what?”

“I’ve been having the hardest time finding him ever since he moved into Ponyville,” Pinkie said, bouncing over to the fridge. “It felt like every time I caught a glimpse of him, he’d just disappear, or start running in the opposite direction! But then Mr. Cake had him over to fix a table, and even though I didn’t catch him, I remembered to ask Mr. Cake aaaall about it a few days later, and it turns out his name is Lapis Print! He’s a repair-pony, and he’s super-busy, and he lives in the Red Repair Shop near Cantering Boulevard!”

“…What?” Twilight asked again, cocking her head in bewilderment.

“I know, right?!” Pinkie said, poking her head out from behind the fridge door. “I was in there! I had some of his blueberry scones, and I didn’t even know it! Anyway, ever since I found out, I’ve been building up supplies to throw a super-duper-looper-perfect party, to help make up for not being able to find him sooner. I thought I was all ready to go yesterday, but then it turned out he was on vacation, so then I had to get even better prepared!” Pinkie paused, then gasped, jumping three feet straight up into the air. “Oh no! I think I forgot to shred confetti for the partillery!”

“Pinkie, dear,” Rarity began, but Pinkie was already gone, disappearing out the door to the shop in a bubblegum blur. There followed a few brief moments of utter stunned silence.

Rarity was first to break the quiet, igniting her horn and shutting the refrigerator door, which Pinkie had left open in her haste. “Well, that was certainly unexpected. To think Pinkie Pie knew of our mysterious repair-pony all this time, and was having just as much difficulty finding him as you were…”

“Wait,” Twilight said, shaking her head. “But that doesn’t make any sense! Rainbow Dash told me all about trying to get away from Pinkie, it just isn’t possible!”

Rarity frowned, tapping a hoof to her chin, then her eyes widened. “…Twilight, would you say the same thing about trying to get away from yourself?”

“Probably,” Twilight replied, staring off into the distance. She hesitated, then her own eyes grew wide in turn, as she turned to stare at Rarity. “You don’t think…”

“I think I do,” Rarity said. “But why in Equestria would he be hiding from Pinkie Pie in the first place? She’s certainly excitable, but that’s certainly no reason to completely avoid her!”

“Rarity, have you ever seen him, either?” Twilight asked.

Rarity hesitated. “Well, no. Before yesterday, I’d only heard of him, but if he shops at the Saddlebag, I can’t imagine he’d be terribly interested in my wares, and I can’t say I’d ever gone looking for a repair-pony, either.”

“That’s still three out of six,” Twilight muttered. Then, she shook her head, starting to pace across the kitchen. “No, there’s still no reason to suspect something strange at play here. I’m sure there’s dozens of ponies in Ponyville I’ve never met.”

“…But how many of them have never met Pinkie Pie?” Rarity asked, and Twilight stopped in her tracks.

“Tomorrow, we need to ask Applejack,” Twilight eventually said. “That should settle it. Out of Rainbow Dash, Fluttershy, and her, Applejack is the most likely to have hired him at some point.”

“And if we find out anything else unusual?” Rarity asked.

“Then we start suspecting something strange.”

Lapis woke up the following morning feeling exhausted. He didn’t even bother to open his eyes at first, still mentally running through the events of the previous day.

He’d spotted a few further pieces of dark wood furniture, all of them broken, and the strange looks had continued all through the day. He’d been able to purchase a few additional copper ingots, along with a bag full of grape-sized chunks of smoke amber, but all the same, he felt like he was just about ready to get out of Amberhoof.

At least in Ponyville, I know what my problems are, Lapis thought, slowly prying his eyes open. The wooden chest was right in his field of vision…

…And the sticky note with the smiley face on it was pointed right at him.

Lapis felt his heart skip a beat, then kick firmly into overdrive, adrenaline beginning to burn in his veins as the tingle of fear in his gut intensified. That was pointed at the door yesterday. I know it was pointed at the door yesterday, because I pointed it there.

“Nikki, are you seeing this?” Lapis muttered. “Am I going crazy?”

He glanced over at Nikki, saw that she was still asleep, and groaned. “Nikki, c’mon, up and at ‘em. Something’s up.”

Lapis glanced back in the direction of the chest - then yelped in surprise, scrambling back on the bed, until he was pressed flat against the corner. “Nikki!” he said. “Nikki, wake up, right now!”

The chest was no longer in the middle of the room. It was, in fact, right next to the side of Lapis’ bed, and Lapis could swear that even the sheet of paper he’d stuck to the face of the chest had moved - instead of being flat on the front of the chest, it was now on the lid, so that the chest now seemed to smile up at him.

Mimic, Lapis thought.

Nikki woke up, looked bewildered upon spotting Lapis, then glanced at the chest and had a double-take.

“We’re leaving,” Lapis said, not taking his eyes off the chest. “We are leaving this town, right the fuck now. I haven’t seen it move yet, but when I glanced at you, it got from the middle of the room, to where it is now. I don’t think it wants to move unless it knows nothing’s watching it. Keep watching it, I need to pack.”

Lapis didn’t take his eyes off the mimic the entire time he was packing, and even once he was done, he stayed in the corner of the room by the door with his saddlebags on his back and his suitcase at his side. He didn’t blink as Nikki flew onto his shoulder, instead winking with each eye in turn. He kept his eyes open as he opened the door, stepped through it, and began to pull it shut.

With the very last inch of space between the door, he slipped, and in the instant that Lapis blinked, the chest had turned to face him, the smiley face he’d drawn the morning before now staring right toward him - then, Lapis shut the door, shivering as he made his way to the counter.

“Hey,” Kacha said, as Lapis hurried up to the desk. “You alright? I head a bit of noise while you were in there.”

“Bad dream,” Lapis muttered. “Right, here’s the key. So is there anything else to the check-out process, or do I just go?”

“Nope, you pretty much just leave,” Kacha said, glancing briefly into the space behind the counter, then looking back up to face Lapis. “I mean, unless there’s anything else you wanna look into…” A look of confusion dawned on Kacha’s face. “…Hey, am I crazy, or was that coffee table not there five seconds ago?”

“Coffee table?” Lapis asked, frowning as he turned to look - then he froze in his tracks as he spotted the dark wooden coffee table sitting in the far corner of the inn’s main room. Sitting at the very center of the table, was the sheet of paper with the smiley face, oriented in line with where Lapis was standing.

“Okay, is this some kind of joke or something?” Lapis asked, not taking his eyes off the table. “Did you move that?”

“Move what, the table?” Kacha said, stepping out from behind the counter and glancing over at Lapis. “Hey you look pale… er than usual, anyway. You okay?”

“Yeah, real funny,” Lapis muttered. “C’mon, Nikki, we’re going.”

“Hey,” Kacha said, as Lapis walked out of the building. “Hey! What’d I say?”

Lapis didn’t respond, and Kacha sighed, casting another glance back at the door. Yikes, whatever that dream was, it must’ve scared him bad. I gotta figure out how I got him mad, though, or else I’m gonna end up in a wall… whuh?

Kacha looked at where the coffee table had been, and was exasperated to realize it was gone. “Okay,” he said aloud. “You did it, my report’s toast now! Congratulations, you’re promoted…”

Kacha frowned, then he felt his eyes snap open as a possibility occurred to him. “Aw, grub,” he muttered, and then he was down the hall, sweeping a wave of green fire across the length of his body with half a thought. He pushed open the door to room double-oh-three, checked the foot of the bed, and froze as he saw the empty space at the foot of the bed.

“Oh, crack my chitin,” Cochineal breathed, the acid-green-turquoise lenses of his compound eyes glittering as he dropped the last vestiges of his disguise. “Firefly, you maggot-riddled pile of-”

Atop one of the walkways at the very top of Amberhoof, Firefly was watching as the very topmost inches of Lapis Print’s head disappeared over the horizon - and even still, he waited the standard count of thirty before turning back to the rest of the town. “Clear!” he called.

And as one, the residents of Amberhoof heaved a sigh of relief, waves of green fire washing over their bodies as every Changeling in the outpost dropped their disguises at once.

“…Okay, who was that guy?” Scorpio asked, from off to Firefly’s left.

“Not a clue,” Firefly said. “He didn’t scan like anypony I’ve ever encountered. But I’m pretty sure he’s taken up residence in our Ponyville watchpoint.”

Scorpio sighed, rubbing his forehead with a hoof as a set of buzzing wingbeats drew closer. “The Queen won’t be happy about this.”

“The Queen isn’t happy about anything,” Firefly muttered, not looking over as the approaching Changeling touched down by his side. “What’s up your shell now, Squish?”

“For the last time, Firefly, my name is Cochineal,” the outpost’s commander said, Scorpio rolling his eyes and taking off as Cochineal turned his glittering eyes on Firefly. “And y’know, this time, I think it might really be the last time. You know why?”

“Because of the artifice stuff?” Firefly snorted. “It’s called ‘creating an asset,’ Squish. You should try it sometime, I hear it looks great on reports. I hear your reports could use a little padding, too.”

Cochineal took a slow, deep breath. “No, actually, though I’m sure the Queen will be thrilled to hear you’re chipping away at one of our race’s precious advantages over the prey. No, I was thinking about how Lapis Print down there managed to get one of your little pet projects back into action.”

“They’re not mine, Squish, I discovered them,” Firefly sighed. “We’ve been over this, remember? Just because you find some neat new mountain in the West, doesn’t mean it’s your mountain-”

“Yeah, well, you’re the one who said breaking them takes them out of commission-”

“Because it does,” Firefly said. “Now, which one of us was it who left the Imprint in the same room as a magically talented repair-pony?”

“You were,” Cochineal said, “y’know, because you were kinda the one in charge of disposing of them in the first place?”

Firefly hesitated. “Uh… that’s no fair.”

“Yeah, sure it’s not.” Cochineal clicked his shell, and a pair of armored guards touched down on the walkway. “Now, your little pet scared him off, but I don’t think they mean anything about us to the average pony. But, that’s not a risk we can take again, so you’re going to clean up your mess, under supervision, and then we’ll see what the Greater Hive thinks about the little lines you draw in the sand.”

The two guards touched down, leveling stinger-serrated spears at Firefly’s neck, and he glanced toward the Greater Hive - the spire buried in the stone, the mountain that the ponies of Dodge City called “The Spoon.” From this angle it loomed, like it was about to fall through the pass, crushing Firefly through every floor of Amberhoof in one stroke. Then, he looked back at Cochineal. “Y’know, Cochi, there’s an easier solution here.”

“Oh, now you give enough of a heap to use my real name,” Cochineal said, but he didn’t fly away.

“He’s not far off,” Firefly said, gesturing down the road. “You could solve all your worries at once. Let me clean up on my own, and get these two big bugs chasing after him instead of me. One more group of worried friends, one more pony in a pod. So what? What’s one more pony, one more drop of water from the ocean?”

Cochineal looked out toward the path, and though the two guards didn’t lower their spears from Firefly’s neck, they glanced at each other, then at Cochineal, awaiting their orders. Their commanded didn’t move, the glare on his face hardening like gemspittle into amber as he watched the point where the path met the horizon.

“One too many,” Cochineal said, not looking at Firefly. “Get him out of my sight.”

“You’re making a mistake, Squish,” Firefly snapped, as the guards trained their gazes on him again, directing him down the stairs at spearpoint. “The Queen’ll eat both our heads and you know it, you roach!”

“She doesn’t actually do that,” Cochineal said, his voice weary. “Nah, what she’ll do is stick us both in a wall, and let the real roaches drop filth on our heads. Move him along, please, and shut him up if he talks again.”

“Oh, that's real mature of you, Squish,” Firefly snarled.

Cochineal sighed and turned to look at Firefly, the look on his face disappointed as he nodded to one of the guards. The guard nodded in reply, and shortly afterward, he punctuated the commander’s wordless retort with the blunt, copper-reinforced butt of his spear.

“You think he wishes he was on the other end?” Firefly heard one of the guards say, as the corners of his vision went dark, and the other snickered.

“Nah,” Cochineal said, gesturing to the spear. “If I know him, he’s wishing he was holding his hoofwork.”

Lucky guess, you grub of an oooww, Firefly thought, and then everything went quiet.

Meanwhile, back in Ponyville, Twilight and Rarity were heading up the hill toward the Apple family barn. To both of their mild surprise, Pinkie was bouncing along behind them, humming a cheerful tune to herself.

Applejack emerged from the apple-cellar just as they crested the hill, and regarded the trio with faint surprise. “Why, Twilight, Pinkie Pie, Rarity, Ah wasn’t expectin’ to see all y’all up here today! What’s the occasion?”

“Not casual, I’m afraid,” Rarity said, coming to a halt. “Applejack, we’re terribly sorry to bother, but have you ever enlisted the services of a unicorn by the name of Lapis Print?”

Applejack’s eyebrows shot up. “What, has he been givin’ the rest of y’all the slip, too?”

Twilight and Rarity exchanged grim looks, then Twilight nodded. “He has, yes. Rarity’s never met him, I’ve only seen him once, and Pinkie Pie couldn’t find him for weeks after he moved here. Given that all of us are Element Bearers, I have reason to suspect he might be-”

“Landssakes,” Applejack muttered, facehoofing. Then, she heaved a sigh and spoke, her voice loud and clear. “Twi, Big Mac is an acquaintance of Lapis’. The two o’ them had a talk recently, about whether and why he was steerin’ clear of me, and Big Mac was kind enough to share a detail or two. Ah was hopin’ Ah wouldn’t need to explain it to all y’all, but here we are.”

“Explain what?” Twilight asked, cocking her head in confusion.

“Explain,” Applejack said, “that you, me, and every other pony he’s avoidin’ have one thing in common, besides bein’ able to use some fancy magic bangles. We’ve saved Equestria, Twi. Most other ponies haven’t done that. They might imagine they can, but when it comes down to it, most of them don’t think they really could, and a lot of them know that we have. That puts us on one side of a fence, and them on the other.”

“You think he’s nervous around us?” Pinkie asked, sitting down and cocking her head in confusion.

Applejack nodded. “Or Big Mac thinks so, anyhow. An’ for what it’s worth, he’s not hidin’ that he exists - hay, every job Ah hired him to do, he did. He’s just a bit like how Fluttershy is around folks she doesn’ know - he’ll be there if he needs to be, but he sure ain’t gonna waltz on up and start talkin’ if he can help it.”

“Oh,” Rarity muttered. “Well, that isn’t nearly as exciting as what I had in mind.”

“Ah s’pect not,” Applejack said. “Now, since y’all’re up here anyhow, could Ah bother you to come over an’ help me sort through a barrel or two of these apples?”

“Hmm…” Pinkie said, her eyes narrowing in deep thought. “…Only if we hurry. I might have an entire party to re-coordinate with Fluttershy ASAP, and three hundred cupcakes to eat. Oh, and also an appointment at noon, to renew my ballooning license!”

“Of course, Applejack,” Twilight said, starting down the stairs, then she looked over at Pinkie. “You have a ballooning license?”

“Well, duh!” Pinkie said, gesturing to her Cutie Mark. “Ooh, hey! You wanna go for a flight sometime? The view’s great, it really helps you see why Rainbow lives up there!”

“I have a ballooning license too, y’know,” Twilight said. “But thank you, Pinkie. …And thanks to you too, Applejack. I was getting a little worried about this whole situation.”

“Ah know the feelin’,” Applejack muttered. “Hey, Rares, what’s the matter? You scared of puttin’ yer hooves to work?”

Rarity scoffed. “Not a bit, thank you. I was just… hoping this might turn out to be a little more exciting, that’s all.”

“It’s Ponyville,” Twilight said, approaching the first barrel of apples. “It never stays boring for long. …Applejack, what exactly are we sorting for, here?”

“Go through each barrel in turn, toss any bad ones you find up the stairs, and make sure there’s no apples in there what shouldn’t be,” Applejack said. “That one’s s’posed to be all Honeycrisp, but Ah think Ah spotted a couple Galas in there.”

“…And are those mostly red with green patches, or with yellow?”

Applejack shrugged. “Both could be either, dependin’. Jus’ trust me, some o’ them will feel different.”

“Right,” Twilight said, and she began to sort through the barrel - and as she did, sure enough, she began to make a small stack to the side of the barrel, finding that some of the apples really did just feel different.

Twilight would’ve felt a lot better about her discovery, if not for the fact that - for some reason she just couldn’t quite put her hoof on - something else felt different, too.

Dear Princess Celestia, she began to compose, and realized she didn't yet know how to continue.

Author's Note

I love mimics.

Patch Notes:

“Seconds” were incorrectly referred to in one place as “sedonds.” While the reasons for this are undlear, rest assured that our bug chedkers are doing their very best. (ObsPerson)
Derpy Hooves was incorrectly identified as a cloudy-greypegasus of indeterminate color, instead of as a cloudy grey pegasus. Unfortunately, our descriptor AI was recently introduced to the evolution and classification of marine life forms, and has since been engaged in guerrilla warfare against the field of taxonomy. After much retraining, it appears to have been convinced that clarity of physical characteristics must still be maintained. (ANerdWithASwitch)
Amberhoof was incorrectly described as Copperhoof, after its other main export. This was due to a poorly updated script, which was designed to name mining towns after the resources they produced - it was initially designed for an aluminum production city in Griffonstone, whose additional frequent excavation of sapphires and rubies led a programmer to assume that metals were generally more important than gems. Script has since been updated (Azarias, Twilight_the_spy)

Anyway, hey, and welcome back again! So much for everything after day one of Lapis’ vacation, but hey, at least he’s got some tools at his disposal now.

So, first things first. Amberhoof represents my answer to what is, without a doubt, the best worldbuilding question I’ve ever asked: “what would happen if you asked a sentient colony of hive insects to build a CIA ghost town?” That’s what led to the idea of box-houses just thrown on top of each other willy-nilly. In a large, more specialized structure like a hive or fortress, you’re not really concerned about making sure every individual room has plumbing, chimneys, etc. - you make dedicated rooms for your fireplaces, toilets, sinks, and other general trash cans, usually close to some main logistical channel, and put everything else wherever it’ll fit. The open sections and alcove walkways are part of the hive-mindset(?) too - Changelings typically have wings, and they might not necessarily be used to constructing for creatures that don’t.

Then there’s the mimic, who I may or may not have a name for, yet. If you’re wondering whether I started reading Discworld recently, I have, and Luggage is easily my favorite thing so far. Rest assured that Lapis’ newest pursuer does not, and never will have teeth, a tongue, acid spit, invulnerability, or glue skin, but that it is nonetheless a force to be reckoned with.

Finally, Cochineal is a kind of beetle that is responsible for numerous varieties of red pigments. These pigments are primarily extracted by crushing the beetles - hence Firefly referring to Cochineal as “Squish.”

And that’s all for this chapter. Thanks again for reading, and I'll see you in the next one!

Nosebleed: Hit the Ground Galloping

At sometime around sunset in Ponyville, Lapis Print stepped out of a train car and heaved a sigh of relief. He’d never expected to be glad about coming back here, but then again, he hadn’t expected to encounter a mimic, either.

Lyra and Bon Bon weren’t at the station, so Lapis started directly back toward his shop, with Nikki on his shoulder and artifice on his mind. The tools in his saddlebags and suitcase were heavy, but he found their weight reassuring - they meant that he had options, or rather the equipment to make himself some options.

Lapis glanced toward the Everfree as he turned onto his street. The ruins where the Elements of Harmony were found… what would I want for a trip inside? Maybe an archeologist’s toolkit, or maybe just a really big, sturdy crowbar…

Lapis reached his shop and stopped, just in front of the door. His shop looked exactly as it had when he left - the paint was still red, the windows were still yellowed, the notice-board was still empty save for his notice - but there was a package on his doorstep. Frowning, Lapis levitated it up for a closer look, and found it to be a slim, dense book - one that had a crisp, yellow piece of folded parchment tied neatly onto it with a narrow, taut length of twine.

Frowning, Lapis unfolded the slip of parchment, which revealed a paragraph of small, neat lettering. Lapis cocked an eyebrow, exchanged a brief glance with Nikki, then began to read through the opening sentences:

Dear Lapis Print,

Hello! We’ve never been introduced, but my name is Twilight Sparkle.

“Uh-oh,” Lapis muttered, his ears flopping backward on his head as his eyes widened.

Nikki shot him a quizzical look, but Lapis ignored it, snatching up the book and glancing around the street to make sure he wasn’t being watched. Then he darted inside his house, Nikki fluttering her wings for balance as Lapis dragged her along, shutting the door behind him and scanning the front room of the shop. Nothing looks tampered with, no hoofprints, no tables or chairs out of place… doesn’t mean much, though. Gotta check the rest of the building.

“This letter’s from Twilight,” Lapis said, as Nikki settled down atop one of the tables. “Watch the streets, I’ll search the house.”

Nikki cocked an eyebrow, but nodded. A few frantic minutes of scrambling later, Lapis had swept the entire house for anything suspicious, and had come up empty-handed. Satisfied but still panicking, he hurried down into the secret basement, securing the closet door closed behind him and unpacking his tools onto their hooks on the workbench and forge. He was a little too hurried, and he managed to scrape one of his knees on the ragged edge of a broken hammer, but he got the job done in less than a minute. Then, after once again checking to make sure the basement was empty except for himself, he resumed reading the note:

I’m writing this note for a few reasons. When Mayor Mare asked me to compile a damage report after the Parasprite attack on Ponyville, I ended up working out that there was also a Harmonic Cascade that day, and that you were most likely the pony responsible. But don’t worry - if the Mayor knows it was you, she doesn’t seem angry about it.

Which brings me to the second reason I’m writing this letter: I’m sorry.

“What?” Lapis muttered.

When the Parasprite swarm first descended on Ponyville, they were tearing through the local crops. I casted a spell to stop them from eating any of the food, and so they started devouring everything else, which I suspect includes something very important of yours. I’m sorry I did that. I’ve had a Cascade before, they’re terrifying, and I feel terrible for causing you enough grief to have one, too.

Attached to this letter, please find a token of my apology: Your Heart, Your Magic and You by Dr. Tranquil Meadows. This is the book that made sure I never had a second Cascade, and I hope it will do the same for you. I found chapters six and seven especially helpful, though two and three are worth reading first if you’re unfamiliar with the terminology.

I understand that this won’t replace what the Parasprites ate, and I am deeply, truly sorry for your loss. I hope that this book will still help you, and that you can find it in your heart to forgive me.

Sincerely, Twilight Sparkle

Slowly, Lapis folded the letter back up, then set it down atop his workbench. He added the book to his small, growing stack, then he sat down to think.

On the one hand, he appreciated the letter. Lapis had suspected that Twilight had something to do with the waves of magic that had altered the Parasprites’ appetites, but he hadn’t confirmed it. The book was a welcome surprise, one he’d be sure to read through at his earliest convenience. And the apology… wasn’t unwelcome, either.

On the other hand, Twilight had just made contact. She knew where Lapis lived and what he did for a living, and she’d even managed to guess an uncomfortably large portion of his emotional state. There were two things that she might not have figured out: whether she knew what he looked like, and whether she knew that he was the same pony from the water tower. Lapis had officially altered the timeline, and if he wanted to avoid altering it any further, he needed a new plan, fast.

Unfortunately, it was now several minutes past sunset. Between the time, and the events that he’d woken up to in Amberhoof, Lapis could practically feel the exhaustion creeping into his limbs as the last of his brain cells settled down for the evening. If the Summer Sun Celebration had taught him one thing, it was that he basically went haywire after sundown, and trying to come up with a plan during that time was bound to backfire. So, Lapis stood up, then climbed the basement stairs with a grimace on his face, fully intending to go to bed and come up with a solution in the morning.

Lapis stepped out of the closet, and paused when he heard a knock at the window. He looked over and saw Lyra smiling and waving at him through the glass, Bon Bon close behind.

He opened the door, and Lyra was the first one through. “Hey, welcome back!”

“Hey, Lyra. Hey, Bon Bon,” Lapis said, shutting the door behind Bon Bon. “Did I miss anything?”

“Well, the lemon meringue cookies have been selling great, and Applejack’s little sister filled my saddlebags with apples and tried to make me pay for them,” Bon Bon said, rolling her eyes, “but no, nothing big. How was your vacation?”

Lyra took a seat by the table. “Yeah, what was Amberhoof like? I’ve never actually been there…”

Lapis’ expression must have been enough of an answer, because Lyra took one look and trailed off. Bon Bon, likewise, shot Lapis a skeptical look. “That bad?”

“That bad,” Lapis muttered. “I managed to buy myself a new set of tools, but… well, yeah, that bad. …Hey, Bon Bon, you know that chunk of wax you knocked out of my attic?”

Bon Bon’s eyebrows shot up, then her face went carefully blank as she, too, sat down at Lapis’ table. “Did you find more of it there?”

“No,” Lapis said. “But whatever creature produces that wax wouldn’t happen to be a mimic, would it?”

Bon Bon frowned, and Lyra glanced over at her, confused. “I can’t say I know what a mimic is. Would you mind giving me a description?”

“A kind of monster,” Lapis said, “one that I’d thought didn’t really exist. In the… stories, they can transform themselves to look like inanimate objects. They’re known for looking like chests inside old abandoned ruins, but they could take the shape of anything else that would get an unwary explorer to walk up to them. Their surface is sticky as superglue, so once you touch it, you can’t get away, and the mimic reveals itself - lots of eyes, a long, sticky tongue that can shoot out like a chameleon’s, and big, sharp teeth.”

“What happens if you don’t get unstuck fast enough?” Bon Bon asked.

Lapis shrugged. “I didn’t touch it, so I never got stuck in the first place. But in the stories, what usually happens is ‘chomp.’”

Lyra’s eyes widened, her ears tucking back, and Bon Bon shook her head. “Then no, it’s not the same type of monster. There aren’t many bestiaries that mention Changelings, the creatures that make that wax. But those bestiaries all agree on one thing: Changelings don’t eat ponies.”

“Wait, hang on,” Lyra said, raising her hooves. “Lapis, you found one of these things?!”

“Well, yeah,” Lapis said. “In the inn where I stayed, there was this broken chest at the foot of the bed - dark brown wood, almost reddish. It was broken, and I was right there, so I fixed it up with a Mend-All. That took a little more out of me than usual, but I didn’t really think about it until later.

“The next morning, I thought it might’ve gotten moved during the night, so I stuck a note to the front of it to help me keep track of which way it was facing. Then, as I went about my business around town, I kept spotting weird quirks about all the furniture around town - almost every single piece of furniture was broken in some way, and the ones that weren’t broken were all that same dark brown color. I only ever saw one dark brown piece at once, either - now that I think about it, all of them might have been the same mimic. I was getting a little freaked out by then, but I got back to my room and got some sleep anyway.” Lapis yawned, then chuckled. “Could do with a good night’s sleep now, actually. It’s been a long day. But I’m not done yet.”

“When I woke up this morning, I never actually saw the chest move - but I know it moved. One second it was in the middle of the room, then I blinked, and it was right next to the bed. I was lucky Nikki had come along with me, I owe her a big bag of birdseed,” Lapis added, glancing over at Nikki, who smirked and waved her wing in an aw-shucks sort of gesture. “I guessed that the mimic only wanted to move when it wasn’t being looked at, and Nikki was able to keep an eye on the thing while I finished packing and got out of that room. I spotted it again while I was in the lobby, so I guess it can open doors, but I haven’t seen it since.”

Bon Bon took all this in with the same carefully blank expression, and slowly nodded as Lapis finished his explanation. “And besides the movement, you never actually saw any features that might imply it was alive? No teeth, eyes, tongue, legs, nothing?”

Lapis shook his head. “No.”

“And when you put that note onto the front of it, it didn’t eat you?”

“…No,” Lapis said, and he felt his brow furrow as the gears began to turn in his head. “I actually had to use an oat from my bowl of oatmeal to stick on the note.”

“Y’know,” Lyra said, cocking her head, “it almost sounds like it was a friendly mimic. I mean, don’t get me wrong,” she added, waving her hooves, “the whole ‘only-moving-when-you-blink’ thing is really creepy, but you were asleep in the same room as the thing, twice. If it wanted to get you, it could’ve… but it didn’t.”

“That was the next thing I was going to mention,” Bon Bon said, nodding. “What got my attention, though, was that you never saw any evidence that it was really a creature, instead of being just some enchanted object.”

Lapis frowned. “Yeah. I guess I was too freaked out to really think about it, but now that I do, I’m starting to wonder if it’s the same kind of mimic as the ones I remember.”

Lyra’s eyes widened, and she gasped. “Hey, wait a second! Don’t Mend-All spells only work on stuff? Like, they can fix tables and chairs and whatever else, but you can’t use them to heal plants, ponies, or anything that’s alive?”

“I… think so,” Lapis said. “I’ve never tried to use a Mend-All on a living thing, though…”

He paused, lifting his left front leg and glancing down at where he’d scraped his knee while trying to put away the new tools. “And to be honest, I wouldn’t even know where to start. Like, if this were a cut, I would just try to smush it shut, but that’s not gonna work here.”

Bon Bon shook her head. “It probably wouldn’t work, even if you knew how to try. I don’t know the details, but if you’re going to affect a living thing with magic, you need to adjust your magic around that fact - that’s why it’s really hard for a unicorn to pick up another pony with their telekinesis.”

“Oh yeah, I remember that!” Lyra said, perking up. “Living creatures, ponies especially, are their own stores of mana. When you try and grab somepony with your horn, you’re trying to move all of their magic, with just a little of yours. It’s like carrying a big rock in a bag made of wet paper - you’ve gotta be really slow and gentle, or they’ll just pop right through your field and fall ofter a second or two. There was this whole nursery rhyme at my kindergarten about a unicorn learning to catch his clumsy friend, it’s actually…” Lyra’s ears half-cocked back. “…kinda dark now that I think about it, but yeah, that’s the basic idea.”

Lapis grinned. “Yeah, I’ve made that discovery a time or two. Anyway, do either of you have any big events coming up?”

Bon Bon shook her head, and Lyra shrugged. “Nope, nothing on my calendar.”

“Just the usual,” Bon Bon added. “Gumdrops, lollipops, and other assorted confections. …Although, I’d be willing to bet Big Mac is getting busy, what with cider season coming up soon.”

“You’re really looking forward to that cider, huh?” Lyra said, giggling.

Bon Bon smirked. “Absolutely.”

‘Have you ever been unsure of how to…’ No, that’s too direct.

‘In the two weeks it’s been since your abbreviated visit to Ponyville…’ No, I can’t do that, either, not without explaining the Parasprites.

‘I think that somepony is avoiding me, and the other Bearers of the Elements of Harmony. Applejack says it’s just because we’re heroes, and that makes us intimidating to the average pony, but for some reason, I can’t seem to believe it…’

“No, no, no!” Twilight groaned, then let her head fall onto her writing desk. Her horn narrowly avoided spearing a heavy, dense volume titled "How I Learned to Love the Spotlight." A few similar volumes were stacked on the corner of her desk, and more were strewn about the bedroom, but Twilight wasn’t in the mood to read any of them.

“Twilight?” Spike asked, walking into the bedroom. “What’s the matter?”

“I still don’t know how to write that letter to the Princess,” Twilight muttered.

Spike cocked an eyebrow, his ear fins perking up in concern. “The one about the strange unicorn?”

“Mm-hm.” Twilight lifted her head off her desk. “I’ve thought through at least two dozen openings by now, but I just can’t get anything to sound right!”

Spike frowned, scratching his head. “Well… have you tried writing about that?”

Twilight cocked an eyebrow. “I don’t know, Spike. ‘Dear Princess Celestia, I want to write this letter, but I’m really not sure how to write it. I can’t really think of any way to bring it up that doesn’t sound a little paranoid, or that won’t mention the swarm of magic bugs I’m partially responsible for. Could I ask for some tips? Your faithful student, Twilight Sparkle.’”

Spike shook his head, waving his arms. “What? No, not like that. Just something like… ‘Dear Princess Celestia, I’ve thought of dozens of ways to bring up the reason I’m writing this letter, but none of them fit, so I’ll get right to the point.’ And then, y’know…” Spike shrugged. “Get to the point!”

“Oh.” Twilight hastily grabbed a quill and copied down Spike’s opening, then set it back down in the inkwell. “Thanks, Spike. Honestly, I don’t know why I didn’t come up with that sooner!”

“That’s what I’m here for!” Spike said, smiling, then hesitating as Twilight turned back to stare down at the letter. “…You’re not sure how to write the rest of the letter too, huh?”

“No,” Twilight sighed. “I think I must’ve gotten too used to writing friendship reports; I just… don’t feel like I know what I’m doing yet.”

Spike frowned, his brow furrowing in concentration as he began to gather up the additional books strewn across Twilight’s bed. “Well, what do you know?”

“I know he’s avoiding me and the Elements, but I don’t know why, not for sure,” Twilight said. “I know he’s a unicorn, but I don’t know if he’s the same unicorn from the water tower, not for sure. I know he’s a repair-pony, and where his shop is, but I don’t know if he’s ever actually in that shop. And I know he and Big Mac talk sometimes, but I still don’t know if I’ve ever seen him!”

“Huh,” Spike said, poking his head around the stack of books he now carried, which was now taller than he was. “Gosh, Twilight. This is really bugging you, huh?”

Twilight sighed, then smirked, her ears flopping back as she stared down at her desk. “I guess I wouldn’t be writing the Princess if it weren’t. …I don’t know. This one feels different, Spike, and I just can’t put my hoof on why.”

Spike shrugged again, lugging the stack of books out of the room. “I mean, I don’t think you’ve ever dropped Pinkie or Rainbow Dash off the Ponyville water tower. Maybe that’s it?”

Twilight blushed, her ears flopping halfway back on her head. “…Maybe. I guess I’ll sleep on it, and see if that helps.”

“Isn’t it a little early?” Spike asked, dusting off his hands as he walked back into the room. “You usually stay up reading for a while.”

“Well, yes,” Twilight said. “But I’ll be up a little earlier than usual tomorrow, too. My thaumometer’s been giving some strange readings since last night, and if my hygrometer and calendar have anything to say about it, then it’s gotta be something to do with wild magic blowing in from the Everfree. Most ponies know that the clouds in the Everfree move by themselves, but it’s much less common knowledge that the seasons there do the same. As such, it’s not nearly as well-documented a phenomenon, and any readings I can collect are bound to shed new light on the study of wild magic!”

Spike quickly stifled a yawn, so quickly that Twilight almost didn’t see it. “Well, I guess I’d better make sure all your instruments haven’t moved anywhere. Goodnight, Twilight!”

“Goodnight, Spike,” Twilight said, as Spike shut the door. Twilight yawned, then clambered into her bed and shut off the lights. Then, after a few seconds, she glanced around, her eyes wide and her ears perked upright, scanning the whole room before she ignited her horn. A single book floated out from beneath her writing desk, the words "Wild Magic - Ancient Shapes and Traditions of Thought" glimmering on the spine.

The book levitated under the covers, and Twilight wasted no time pulling them over her head like a tent. A few seconds later, her horn began to glow, and for a long time afterward, the only sound in the slowly-dimming bedroom was the hushed rasp of turning pages.

When Lapis stepped out of his front door the following morning with his order slips in his saddlebags, the weather that greeted him as he stepped out the front door wasn’t… as hot as he’d been expecting.

It was still hot, humid, and buggy, even though the sun was only barely peeking over the horizon, its first rays setting the clouds gleaming like gold foil in the amethyst-tinged skies. There were still only a few puffs of cloud, so that the skies above Ponyville would promise a sunny day - if Ponyville weather wasn’t mostly controlled, anyway. But there was a breeze pushing its way up from the south, gently pressing between the houses and down the streets like a hurried pedestrian through a crowd, and on that breeze was a faint, crisp chill.

That chill wasn’t quite cold, yet it was still a little too cold to be merely cool - just enough to set the tips of Lapis’ ears and nose tingling as the breeze tousled his mane. It was the promise of fall, far distant and yet approaching, and it was enough to make Lapis consider going back home to drink a second cup of coffee out in front of his store.

Sadly, that wasn’t in the cards for today - or rather, it wasn’t in the order slips. Lapis had once again built up a backlog in his three days’ absence, and though it was too early yet for either roofing jobs or interior work, there were still a few fence gates, mailboxes, and other exterior odds and ends that he could put back together. Lapis paused in front of a house near the center of town, glancing down at one of his order slips before checking the doorstep of the building. He spotted a welcome mat with a torn corner sitting in front of the door - one telekinetic push and a flash of light later, the mat was fixed, and Lapis was on his way again.

As he went, he thought about Twilight’s letter, and how he was supposed to deal with it. The odds were good that she might try to make a follow-up visit, and Lapis needed a game plan for what to do if it happened. Moving would be the simplest option, but it’s out of the question - I’d be giving up the secret basement. I could also try to fake a new identity… but that’s probably a crime, and seeing as one of my friends might be some kind of special horses unit, getting on the wrong side of the law is a bad plan.

Lapis jerked the post of a street sign back into shape, his Cutie Mark flaring with warmth for only a moment before the chill morning breeze brushed the heat aside, then sighed. I could also try spending every waking moment racking my brains for every last detail I can remember from the TV show, then base my entire schedule on the whereabouts of Twilight and her friends for the rest of my stay here. Except that would probably drive me insane, and I’d never get anything done.

“So why was that my plan?” Lapis muttered. He rounded a corner, bending the chain link on a hanging flowerpot back into shape with half a glance-

“Hrf!”

“Ope!”

-before walking into something that felt remarkably like a curved, fuzzy brick wall, and falling back onto his rump.

“Mornin’, Lapis,” said a familiar voice. “Sorry ‘bout that, Ah must’ve been distracted.”

“You and me both, Big Mac,” Lapis said, shaking his head and then getting to his hooves. “You’re up early, what’s the occasion?”

Big Mac shrugged, seeming completely unharmed by the collision as he gestured to the pair of saddlebags slung over his back. “Ah was makin’ a list in the cider barn, and Ah realized we were missin’ some pieces. Thought Ah could buy them ‘fore the mornin’ rush, but so far, nothin’s open. You?”

“Knocking some exterior requests off my pile,” Lapis said. “No roofwork yet, since I don’t wanna wake anypony up, but there’s still plenty of bits and pieces I can fix now.”

“Must be a big pile, what with your trip to Amberhoof,” Big Mac noted. “How’d that go? You get the tools you needed?”

“I did,” Lapis said, grimacing. “But it wasn’t a vacation, I’ll put it that way.”

Big Mac chuckled. “E-yup. …Come to think of it, Ah know just what you mean. Applejack caught me takin’ inventory this mornin, an’ tried to tell me Ah was catchin’ a break out of it. She’s not wrong, but… well, Ah left the math to her back there, and we’ll see whether she changes her tune.”

“She’s bad at math?” Lapis asked, cocking an eyebrow.

“Nope,” Big Mac said. “She’s decent at it, it just takes her a while to warm up. Right now, Ah imagine she’s still glarin’ down at those numbers, trying to out-stubborn them into doin’ themselves.”

“Oh,” Lapis muttered. “Yeah, I’ve tried that before. Sometimes it works.”

“For you, maybe. If you got any tips, she might appreciate them,” Big Mac said. “Long as you show you’re not just standin’ by and ‘supervising’ first, anyhow.”

A quick jolt of panic shot through Lapis as he recognized the invitation, but he managed to suppress it to a quick twitch of his ears. “Honestly, if I didn’t have so much on my plate, I’d be happy to. As it is…” Lapis glanced down at his list, and winced. “Yeah, definitely not happening today. If she listens to you, try getting her to write it down as she goes, but that’s just about all the help I can spare. …Actually, what’re you missing? Because if it’s tacks, I’ve got about half a million in my supply closet.”

“Nope. Just carpentry nails and screws,” Big Mac said. “An’ Ah already know where to get ‘em, but Ah appreciate the offer.”

Lapis nodded. “Alright. Well, here’s hoping they open soon.”

“E-yup, The main hardware store should, anyhow,” Big Mac said. “Ah’d best be headin’ there now, come to think of it.”

“Yeah, I’ve got my own stuff, too,” Lapis said. “See you around, Big Mac!”

“See yuh!” Big Mac replied, then he started back down the road in the direction that Lapis had gone. Lapis was on his own way a few moments afterward, and as he walked down the street, he glanced off to one side to bend the torn seam of a gutter back into shape. Because of this, he simply failed to notice two things: the small, dark wooden porch table sitting in front of one of the nearby houses, and the purple unicorn standing in the shadows behind it.

Twilight honestly, truly hadn’t meant to spy on the repair-pony’s conversation with Big Mac.

She’d been trotting down toward the Everfree from the Golden Oak, with her instruments and notepads levitating to one side and a steaming mug of coffee on the other. Then her thaumometer had suddenly started going haywire, firing off a series of beeps that translated to a slow, repeating two-beat pattern of low-intensity background intent unlike anything she’d ever seen before. Twilight had followed the signal down an alleyway, and was fairly certain she was only inches away from the signal’s source - but she’d forgotten all about it as soon as she’d heard Big Mac say the other pony’s name.

Lapis Print, Twilight thought, tuning out the thaumometer as it continued to quietly chime at her side. Unicorn. Creamy-white coat, blue mane and tail, dark brown eyes and corona. Definitely an accomplished caster of some repair spell, though I’m not sure it’s a Mend-All - those usually have a much longer incantation.

Suddenly, the thaumometer stopped chiming. Twilight paused, looking down - and realized that the table she’d been standing behind was gone. It only took her a second to put two and two together, and she filed “runaway enchanted table” under her list of things to investigate later. Right now…

Twilight stepped out of the alleyway, rounded a corner, and approached Big Mac at a casual trot.

By the time that Lapis was done with the exterior jobs, it was late enough in the morning that other ponies were already out and about on the street, so he felt comfortable with getting started on his other jobs. This, it turned out, didn’t afford him a lot of time to think - and even when he tried, he almost got trampled by a trio of fillies carrying what looked like too many musical instruments and a case or two of makeup. After that, he devoted most of his time to looking where he was going.

When he returned to his shop that evening and fixed himself some dinner, he still wasn’t sure how to proceed. So, he headed down to his basement and put his new tools and knowledge to the test, making a crude copy of Firefly’s safety bracelet.

A little lumpier than his, Lapis thought, looking at the crudely-hammered band of gleaming copper now wrapped around his hoof, still warm to the touch from its time at the forge. But as long as it works…

Lapis slowly lowered his hoof toward the hot forge - and with a snap of air and a flash of candle-yellow light, his hoof was suddenly flying away from the forge. Lapis didn’t even have time to grin before his hoof smacked him in the face, knocking him back to the floor. Welp, I guess it works.

A short while later, Lapis was back upstairs in his dining room, holding a small cloth bag full of ice to his black eye while he scribbled away at the empty notepad, trying to put together the rune sequence for a larger device of his own. If I use a big iron nub in place of an eye gem, then I should be able to set the whole thing going just by grabbing the iron portion. And after that… well, I’ll need to add a lot of delay runes, to make sure all the quartz gets powered at the same time, but besides that, it should just be a matter of affixing them at the right angles-

Lapis was interrupted by the opening notes of something that almost sounded like a rock ballad. Frowning, he glanced out the window with his uncovered eye, and found that there was some kind of show happening near the outskirts of Ponyville. And me without my earbuds.

“Look, here are three little ponies,” a little girl’s voice began singing. “Ready to sing for this crowd…”

The pitch of the melody grated on Lapis’ nerves like nails down a blackboard, and he felt his ears flatten themselves back against his head at once. “Here we go,” he muttered.

“Listen up,” the voice continued, “‘cause here’s our story, I’m gonna sing it…”

“Please don’t.”

“VERY LOUD!” the singer finished at top volume, now joined by two equally high-pitched companions, and Lapis suddenly realized it was in his best interests to find some kind of hearing protection.

Still holding the bag of ice to his eye, he started walking around his house, trying to find which room let the least amount of sound through the walls. His bedroom didn’t work, and the kitchen and bathroom walls might as well have been cardboard for all the soundproofing they had. Lapis didn’t remember the basement until he was halfway down the hall to the guest bedroom, but he wasted no time heading into the closet and down the stairs.

As soon as he set his hoof on the first step, the song cut off mid-word, as suddenly and abruptly as if Lapis had hit a ‘pause’ button somewhere. Lapis stopped, removing his hoof and backing up into the closet - and the concert resumed, the little fillies’ voices digging into Lapis’ ears like an especially off-tune trio of referees’ whistles.

Frowning, Lapis stepped through the doorway, and again, all sound was abruptly cut off. Back - noise. Forward - no noise.

“Doorway must be enchanted,” Lapis muttered, glancing briefly at the frame of the door - and sure enough, there appeared to be a copper panel inscribed with runes on the inside of the archway, only some of which Lapis recognized. He didn’t bother trying to decode them just yet, instead hurrying down the stairway into the blessed silence of the hidden workshop.

He took a seat at his workbench, looked down at the paper listing what he’d worked out for the rune sequence, and suddenly found that he couldn’t bring himself to finish it. Lapis groaned, blinking as he pulled his improvised ice pack away from his face and set it atop the workbench. Then, he leaned onto the workbench himself, staring up at the rack of tools hanging above his head.

I gotta come up with a new plan.

“I’m not moving,” he muttered. “I’m not going to go fully obsessive, and I’m not faking a new identity. Maybe I could just set up an amulet, to let me know when they’re getting nearby?”

Lapis briefly checked his runic cheat-sheet, and grimaced. Except there’s no specific rune for “this individual pony, specifically”, because all runes have to specify their targets relative to… He flipped to the section on runes in Trixie’s book on artifice, and quickly found one of the few sections that hadn’t been eaten into unreadability. ‘…Relative to either the device, or to the pony wearing it.’ Closest rune I can get is “the pony that I’m looking at.” So, what do I do here?

“If I could start over,” Lapis muttered. “I could stick a plug up my chimney, I wouldn’t need to get those books from Twilight, I could’ve even kept an eye out for Nightmare Moon’s smoke-monsters…”

He remembered the night of the Summer Sun Celebration, and something about that evening began to niggle at him. “Nightmare Moon,” Lapis muttered, thinking back to when he’d been standing in the room with the possessed princess, the not-a-pony-anymore, standing to watch her deliver her announcement and praying he didn’t look strange or interesting enough to single out-

Lapis felt his eyes snap open as an idea clicked into place, then he slumped forward, letting his forehead thunk against his workbench. “Wow,” he muttered, a smile slowly stretching across his face. “Oh my god, I’m so dumb.”

A few moments later, Lapis picked his pencil back up, and started scribbling down the rest of the rune sequence. He had to squint through his black eye, but at this point, he was too happy to care, humming along to the tune in his head. He had a plan again.

“Times have changed, and times are strange,” he began to sing, for the first time in almost two months. “Here I come, but I ain’t the same…”

Lapis paused, grimaced, and kept writing in silence.

“…And how are you feeling this morning, little mole?” Fluttershy asked.

Luckily for any observer’s sense of decency, Fluttershy was not addressing any part of her own body. Instead, she was speaking to a more garden-variety mole sitting atop her kitchen table, whose claws had finally grown back to a usable length after more than two weeks of painstaking care. The mole in question waddled over to one of Fluttershy’s pots of herbs, briefly stuck its forepaw into the dirt, and began to rummage around.

Fluttershy held her breath as, for a few more moments, the mole continued to dig - then, with a triumphant squeak, the mole pulled free a long, wriggling earthworm. Fluttershy beamed as the mole briefly held the worm aloft, then threw the worm over its shoulder back into the pot. “Wonderful! Now, just remember to look out for any more hard rocks when you go digging-”

“FLUTTERSHY!”

Pinkie burst through Fluttershy’s door, and Fluttershy eeped and rolled over onto her back, her legs sticking straight up into the air.

Pinkie, apparently not noticing either Fluttershy’s terror or the mole’s irritated glare, launched right into a verbal barrage. “If I had to throw you a party, and I mean a really super-duper special party, like an ‘I’m-sorry-I-haven’t-thrown-you-a-party-for-two-months-and-also-welcome-to-Ponyville’ party, how should I do it? Because there might be a new pony in Ponyville that I haven’t been able to throw a party for ever since he got here almost two months ago, and it turns out he’s just as shy as you are, and I really don’t wanna mess things up!”

“Oh, hello, Pinkie Pie,” Fluttershy said, shakily getting back to her hooves. “I’m sorry, what was it you were asking?”

“Advice!” Pinkie shouted, and Fluttershy winced at the noise. “I need some tips on getting a party together!”

“…From… me?” Fluttershy asked, her eyes widening. “But… I don’t know anything about parties, Pinkie Pie.”

“Oh, of course you do!” Pinkie said, smiling. “You know what you like at parties, don’t you?”

“…Yes,” Fluttershy said, glancing to the side. "Most of the time, I like the snack tables, especially if there’s a lot of room underneath of them. And I always like the host’s pets."

“Great! Because I need to set up a really, really important party, for somepony who I haven’t been able to find for almost two months now!”

Pinkie started bouncing up and down as she spoke, and Fluttershy raised a hoof. “Um, Pinkie Pie. Please be careful, you’re getting a little too close to the-”

Pinkie Pie clipped the table with the edge of her hoof, and suddenly she, the table, and the flowerpot atop it went crashing to the ground. The mole squeaked in surprise as it was suddenly tossed into the air, and Fluttershy just managed to get her hooves out in time to catch it midair.

“-table,” Fluttershy finished. “Oh dear. Are you okay?”

Pinkie stuck her head up from the floor, a dirt-covered clump of chamomile flowers lodged firmly in the top of her mane. “No, I’m not okay! I don’t think I’ve ever been two months late on somepony’s Welcome-to-Ponyville party before, ever!”

“Oh. I’m sorry, but I’m really not sure if I know how to help. What pony did you say you were throwing this party for?”

“Oh! Right!” Pinkie said, getting to her hooves. “I was actually going to ask if you’d ever met him before! He’s a repair-pony, and he’s kind of tricky to get a hold of, but his name is Lapis Print!”

“I don’t think I’ve ever met a Lapis Print,” Fluttershy began, setting the mole down on her kitchen counter and looking over at her kitchen table. “But I know I could probably use a repair-pony…”

“Ooh!” Pinkie Pie said, midway through attempting to replant the chamomile flowers into a pot of squarish, arrow-leafed mint stalks. “That gives me an idea! What if you just asked him what he wanted?” And as Fluttershy’s eyes went wide, the pigeon that had been sitting outside Fluttershy’s window spread his green-patched wings and took to the air.

Lapis had initially only returned to his house for some lunch, but had instead found himself heading into the workshop to get started on the components of his next project. He managed to assemble a wide, angled wooden base like a flattened pyramid, and was just beginning to hammer out eight copper cylinders when something popped out of his chimney in a shower of feathers and soot.

“Nikki, is that you?” Lapis asked, stepping away from the forge and helping to dust off the coughing pigeon on his floor. “Great timing, actually, there’s something I wanted to tell you- what’s the matter?”

Nikki shook her head, then took off for the door to Lapis’ workshop, cooing urgently. Lapis frowned, setting the hammer he was using on the floor by the forge, and followed her up the stairs and out the door.

“What’s going on?” Lapis asked, only growing more confused as he opened the closet door and Nikki immediately headed to the front door of his shop, perching on the doorknob. “Is something happening in town?”

Nikki shook her head, then beckoned with her wing, Lapis hurrying over to open the door. She took off again as soon as the door was open, and Lapis took off after her at a gallop. “Nikki, hey, slow down!”

Nikki did no such thing, and in little time at all, Lapis found himself on the opposite side of town, approaching a small, wooded clearing right at the edge of the Everfree Forest. At its center was an equally small, cozy-looking cottage. Unlike most of the houses in Ponyville, which had thatch of some sort for a roof, this cottage was instead equipped with a thick, fluffy coating of living leaves to keep off the rain. It had a multitude of windows lit from within by warm, yellow lanternlight, and hanging from every ledge and windowsill were one or more birdhouses. There were dozens of birds nearby, along with plenty of ground critters, many of which were shooting confused glances in Lapis’ direction as he approached the house, crossing a short, railless wooden bridge over a small, winding brook.

“Okay, for real, what’s happening?” Lapis asked, trying not to pant for breath as he looked up at Nikki. “You had me gallop all the way out here, something’s gotta be up.”

Nikki rolled her eyes, perching by the two-part door of the building, then beckoned Lapis onward with a wing. Lapis hesitated, then trotted up to the waiting pigeon, glancing around again to see if he was being watched. To his surprise, he wasn’t - for some reason, every critter and bird in the vicinity now seemed thoroughly preoccupied with their own business. Lapis thought he saw a rat briefly glancing toward Nikki, but then the rat blinked and kneaded its eyes with its paws, and he realized the rodent was just cleaning itself off. I didn’t even know there were rats in Ponyville.

At Nikki’s insistence, Lapis pushed open the door to the building and stepped inside - and stopped only a few steps into the building. This was definitely somepony’s residence - the lanterns were all freshly lit, the large pastel rugs on the floor were kept carefully clean and fluffy, and almost every windowsill was adorned by a pot of live herbs, most of which looked freshly watered-

“Oh, who the hell…?” Lapis muttered, spotting a dirty cluster of chamomile, obviously from a shattered pot, haphazardly shoved into the same pot as a thicket of mint. “That’s not gonna work, the mint’ll just grow right over it.” He levitated the chamomile free of the mint, and briefly glanced around for a better location before shoving the chamomile into a nearby pot of purple, cone-shaped echinacea flowers.

Nikki let out a frustrated squawk, and Lapis sighed. “Alright, yeah, sorry. Just spotted a gardening mistake is all. What’s the- oh.”

In the middle of the room was a very broken three-legged table. It was upside-down, granting Lapis an unobstructed view of its legs - two of them had been roughly torn off, and Nikki was perched on the third, giving Lapis her best ‘are-you-stupid’ look. Lapis quickly pressed the legs back into place, the twin flashes of warmth against his flank assuring him that they were mended, then he levitated the table into the air and flipped it upright.

“There we go,” Lapis said, as Nikki perched atop his head. “Table fixed. Anything else-”

Another coo sounded from outside, and a few seconds later, a second pigeon flew into the cottage. This one had green patches on the corners of its wings, and it wasted no time in aiming a series of trills and squawks in Nikki’s direction.

Lapis cocked an eyebrow, remembering what had happened last time he’d seen Nikki having a discussion with her acquaintances, and felt a tingle of unease beginning to build in his gut as he saw Nikki’s eyes growing wide. “Hey, do I need to be worried about something, or-”

Nikki took off and flew against the back of Lapis’ neck, practically trying to shove him out the door. “Alright, fine, I’m going, calm down!”

He hurried out the cottage’s front door, and again spotted a number of critters giving him odd looks. The new pigeon with the green patches, who had perched on Lapis’ back, let out a short, sharp squawk, and suddenly all the animals were minding their own business again. Okay, something’s definitely going on with the pigeons in this town. “Nikki, I might have a few questions to ask once we get out of here.”

Nikki rolled her eyes, then took off again, heading off the path and into some nearby brush, hovering there long enough to jerk her head in the direction she’d flown. Growing more confused by the second, Lapis nonetheless took her cue and stepped off the path.

“…So then of course I had to ask about the pancakes, because duh, pancakes!” Pinkie continued. “And wouldn’tcha know it, they have a Bright-and-Early Special, and they’ll give you a whole stack of pancakes, but with haycon and cherries and whipped cream on it so that it looks like it’s smiling at you! And at first I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, that sounds amazing!’”

“It does sound nice,” Fluttershy said, trudging along after Pinkie with her head low. My goodness, she always has so much to say.

“Right?!” Pinkie said, spinning mid-bounce to face Fluttershy. “But then, I realized - I have to eat those pancakes! And how in the world am I supposed to do that? I mean, there’s no way I could start from the bottom and go up - then I would eat the smile first, and the pancakes wouldn’t be smiling anymore, they’d just be staring at me, and that would be terrible! But I couldn’t start from the top and go down, either, because then the eyes would be gone first, and then how would the pancakes know I was still smiling back?!”

“Um, Pinkie?”

“So then I realized: I would have to eat them from the side! But which side? The right side seemed right to me, but then I figured out that my left was the pancakes’ right!” Pinkie spun back around, facing forward as she continued to bounce back toward Fluttershy’s cottage. “And then, I thought I had to figure out which right was more right - the pancakes’ right, or mine? And then it hit me - if I ate the pancakes in one bite, I wouldn’t have to figure it out!”

“Well, yes,” Fluttershy said. “But, um, Pinkie Pie.”

“So, here’s what I’m wondering, and here’s why I’m telling you all this in the first place,” Pinkie said, spinning to face Fluttershy once again. “When you’re in the Everfree Forest, looking for plants or birds’ nests or squirrel babies or something, and you meet a big scary monster that might want to gobble you up, do you smile at it? And, and, if you do, do the monsters get all confused trying to figure out how to gobble you, or do they just try to do it all at once?”

Fluttershy paused, glancing to the side as she thought. “Well, usually I don’t meet any big scary monsters. I spend a lot of time looking for tracks or signs, so that I know where the big scary monsters live, and I don’t come barging in while they’re cranky. And… well, usually the big scary monsters don’t want to eat me at all.”

Pinkie stopped midair, cocking her head. “Huh? Ooh, wait! You mean like the Manticore in the Everfree?”

“Yes, exactly,” Fluttershy said, starting forward again. “Manny certainly looks big and scary, and he’s very loud when he’s grumpy. But once you get to know him, he’s just a big, sweet kitty. And, well… there are some creatures that are mean enough to try eating ponies, like Timberwolves, or the hydra in Froggy Bottom Bog. Usually, I don’t go anywhere near them. But if they ever come near me, then I see if they need help before I fly away. I don’t think I’ve ever tried smiling at them,” Fluttershy finished. “I never knew you were curious about monster behavior, Pinkie Pie.”

“Well… I’m not usually, but ever since we met that dragon, I started wondering whether he would’ve been less cranky after a party!” Pinkie said. “So really, I’m trying to figure out how to convince a big, hungry, meanie-pants monster that it’d be a better idea to gobble up some cake than to gobble me.”

“That… might be a teensy bit difficult,” Fluttershy said, as she and Pinkie crossed the bridge that led back to her cottage. “Monsters usually like to be-”

Pinkie bounced through the door of Fluttershy’s cottage and stopped, her eyes widening as she gasped. “I don’t believe it!”

“Believe what?” Fluttershy asked, stepping inside as Pinkie darted into the dining room.

“Look!” Pinkie said, gesturing to the potted mint, and then to Fluttershy’s pot of purple echinacea blossoms, which were now being shared by the white-petaled chamomile flowers. “Fluttershy, I think your daisies can teleport!”

“Oh, they’re not daisies,” Fluttershy said, frowning at the flowerpot. “But I’m sure you put those in the pot with the mint… and I thought we turned this table over, too.”

“Hey, you’re right! We did!” Pinkie said, looking at the table. She stooped to look underneath, and smacked her forehead with her hoof. “Aw, darn! We missed him!”

“Missed who?” Fluttershy said, peering under the table.

Pinkie huffed, gesturing to the table’s legs, which were as whole as if they’d never been broken. “Um, duh! Only the fastest, sneakiest ninja-pegasus repair-pony in Equestria!”

Fluttershy frowned as she and Pinkie got out from beneath the table. “You think he did this? But… we only dropped off that repair slip at his house a few minutes ago!”

“I know, right?” Pinkie said, leaning forward and rubbing her chin with her hoof. “Hmm… he’s good. We need a Plan B…”

“Um, Pinkie Pie,” Fluttershy said, raising a hoof. “Actually, what I’ve been trying to say is-”

“Ooh! I’ve got it!” Pinkie said. “We need a scone, a stick, a rope, and a cardboard box!”

Fluttershy pressed on. “Pinkie Pie, are you sure that throwing an entire party for this pony is the right thing to do?”

Pinkie screeched to a halt halfway toward Fluttershy’s kitchen. “Uh, of course! It’s been two months, remember? What kind of party-pony would I be if I only threw somepony half a party, two months late for a whole party?”

“Well, yes, I see what you mean,” Fluttershy said, “I was just thinking, maybe this pony might not really want a whole party.”

Pinkie, who was now rummaging through Fluttershy’s cabinets, momentarily paused to cock her head. “Huh?”

“Well, it’s just that you said you were having a tough time finding him, to find out what he might like in a party,” Fluttershy said, scraping at the ground with her hoof. “And… well, I think you also said he was probably just as shy as I was.”

“Yep! Just as shy, a little faster, and way, way sneakier,” Pinkie said, snatching a sack of flour out of Fluttershy’s cabinet and zipping over to the nearest empty counter, grabbing a mixing bowl and beginning to pour.

“Yes,” Fluttershy said. “And the thing is, if there were somepony in Ponyville that I didn’t really want to meet, and they were searching for me, then… well, I’m not sure how to say this, Pinkie, but I think I might hide from them-”

Pinkie’s eyes widened, and a puff of flour suddenly erupted from the mixing bowl as she squeezed the bag. For a second, Fluttershy worried that Pinkie had taken the news badly, but then Pinkie pointed out the window with a hoof. “There he is!”

Fluttershy just had time to glance out the window, catching a glimpse of a creamy-white stallion with a blue mane and tail, accompanied by a pair of pigeons, stepping onto the path not far down the road from her cottage. Then, suddenly, Pinkie was darting for the door at top speed, shoving Fluttershy in front of herself.

“Pinkie, wait!” Fluttershy said, and Pinkie jerked to a halt two inches from Fluttershy’s front door. “Um, you asked for my advice, didn’t you?”

“Mm-hm!”

“Well, I guess this is what I have to say.” Fluttershy briefly shut her eyes, took a deep breath, then spoke. “If that pony were me, then I don’t think I would want anypony to chase me, even if it was for a party. I think I would just be scared, and I wouldn’t want anything to do with the pony chasing me. I might even hide from them.”

Pinkie blinked, then sighed. “Well, yeah, maybe you’re right. But Fluttershy, I’ve been trying to find this pony for months! I don’t know what else I’m supposed to do?”

With some difficulty, Fluttershy suppressed a sigh of relief. “Well, um, if I wanted to welcome somepony into Ponyville…”

“Alright, Nikki,” Lapis said, as he walked back down Cantering Boulevard toward the Corner Cafe, hesitating as he glanced at the second pigeon perched on his back. “…And you too, I guess. What just happened?”

The second pigeon took off at once, disappearing over a rooftop, and Lapis frowned before turning his focus to Nikki. “I guess I’m just asking you, huh?”

Nikki shook her head, but waited for Lapis to go on, so he had to decide what to ask first. What came to his mind was how, on the evening before the Parasprite infestation, he’d seen Nikki conversing with two other pigeons - one of which, he suspected, was the bird with the green patches on its wings. Then, the following day, it seemed as if every pigeon in Ponyville was taking refuge inside Lapis’ house.

“So, just to make sure we’re on the same page here,” Lapis began. “Do you, or do you not, have some kind of… sway, or authority or something in the local pigeon community?”

Nikki smirked, then nodded, making a “so-so” gesture with her wing.

“Okay,” Lapis said, nodding slowly. “And that other pigeon, the one with the green patches. Do they work with you, or for you, or something?”

Nikki nodded again.

“Right,” Lapis sighed, as the sound of flapping wings began to approach. “So what happened back there, was it something to do with-”

The green-patched pigeon touched down on Lapis’ back again, bearing an order slip in its beak. Lapis frowned, then levitated the slip over to inspect it. “Broken table,” he muttered, struggling to read the curling scrawl of the order. “Two torn legs, at cottage near the edge of the village, for… Fluttershy?”

Lapis slowed to a stop in the middle of the street, freezing as he realized whose house he’d just been inside of. “You’re trying to help me avoid the Element Bearers,” he muttered.

The second pigeon nodded, and Nikki smirked again. Lapis grimaced. “Alright. First off - thanks, I owe you a giant bag of birdseed. But the plan on that front just changed a little. I’ll tell you after I get some chow-”

Nikki nodded again, then looked toward Green-patches and released a few quick trills. Patches took off, and Lapis watched him go with a little consternation. “…Should I be worried about that?”

Nikki shook her head, then gestured with her wing toward the Corner Cafe. Lapis cocked an eyebrow, then stepped inside.

“Table for…” Lapis began, but the brown-coated pegasus waitress shook her head, cutting him off. “Don’t worry about it. Lyra and Bon-Bon are right over there. You want your usual?”

Oh. “Yes, please. Thank you, Hot Cocoa,” Lapis said, shooting her a quick wave as he headed to the indicated table. “Lyra, Bon Bon, what’s going on?”

Bon Bon and Lyra, who were engaged in conversation, looked up as he approached. “Oh, hey, Lapis! You showed up right on time!” Lyra said, grinning.

“Yeah, we were actually just wondering something,” Bon Bon said. “Do you have any frequent-flyer customers? Lyra and me are trying to figure out who’s the clumsiest pony in Ponyville might be. I think it’s Derpy Hooves…”

“But in my books, Rainbow Dash could give her a real run for her bits,” Lyra finished. “Y’know, with how much you mention patching up ponies’ rooftops after she makes unscheduled landings?”

“That’s… actually kind of a tough one,” Lapis said, taking a seat. “My records say it’s Rainbow, but my gut says Derpy. Between the two of them, Rainbow’s definitely responsible for more of my job, but Derpy sticks more request slips to my door - not to say anything against Rainbow Dash, but I think Derpy Hooves is a little more responsible. What that makes me wonder, is how many accidents Derpy causes and then cleans up herself.”

“A lot of them,” said a voice off to Lapis’ left. “No contest, it’s Derpy.”

Lapis looked up to see Hot Cocoa arriving at their table and dishing out the three plates across her back. “We get together for brunch sometimes, she always spills her cocoa, and she always cleans it up herself. Here’s your usual, Lapis, plus a Bright-and-Early for Bon Bon and a Haycon Harvest for Lyra.”

“Thanks, Hot Cocoa,” Lyra and Bon Bon chorused, and Hot Cocoa took her leave. Lapis took a bite or two of his omelet, chewed, then began. “So, while we’re on the subject of the Elements-”

Lyra froze midway through chewing a bite, her ears pricking up and her eyes going wide. Without breaking eye contact with Lapis, she swallowed and elbowed Bon Bon, who looked up from her platter of pancakes.

“…Okay, what’s with the look?” Lapis asked, gesturing to Lyra’s suddenly rapt expression.

“Oh, no reason,” Lyra said, still not breaking eye contact. “This wouldn’t be the ‘I’m-done-avoiding-Pinkie-now’ announcement, would it?”

Lapis rolled his eyes and grinned. “Well… yeah. Kinda.”

Nikki rolled her eyes, then cuffed Lapis upside the ears. Lyra whooped, pumping her hooves, and Bon Bon grinned across the table at Lapis. “Congratulations! What convinced you?”

“A lot of stuff,” Lapis said. “You already know I did the math about how much time it’d save me, and… well, I’m still planning to get back home. But keeping up all this stress from dodging her party isn’t going to get me anywhere but Ponyville General, and that’s… not really a great outcome. So, yeah. When that party happens, it happens, and I’m not running from it anymore.”

“Yeah!” Lyra said, holding up her glass of water for a toast. “I’ll look forward to the invitations!”

Lapis joined Lyra in her toast, and Bon Bon did the same, but she was still giving Lapis a concerned look. “And you’re… completely done hiding from her? No mask, no disguises, no keeping watch through windows?”

“…Not exactly,” Lapis said, and Bon Bon protectively crossed her hooves over top of her plate of pancakes. “Look, I’m still not the biggest fan of Pinkie Pie, so I’d really prefer not to be somepony that she, or any of her friends, visit on a regular basis. But so far, trying to avoid them entirely… well, Twilight left a letter at my house while I was away, so I guess that jig might be up. If we meet, we meet, but I’m not going to prolong the conversation, or do anything remotely interesting while they’re nearby.”

It was essentially the same approach he’d taken when it came to Nightmare Moon, and that had - so far as he could tell - been effective. He hadn’t tried to hide, or run away, or even to really avoid her at all. No, what he’d done was to march right into Town Hall, knowing full well that there’d be a pony boogeyman inside, and trusting that he wouldn’t stand out.

After all, he’d reasoned, what’s one more terrified face in a crowd? What’s one more pastel pony in the herd, another patch of color in the splatter art? Nothing. Just a part of the background, something to look right over and forget about.

He’d done nothing, except to blend into the crowd. And Nightmare Moon’s gaze had passed over him like he wasn’t even there. The way Lapis saw it, if a possessed not-technically-a-goddess-but-close-enough couldn’t spot that Lapis was a human trapped in a pony body from inside the same room, then he had no reason so believe that Twilight and her friends would be able to do the same, so long as he didn’t give them any incentive.

I’ve still got some work to do on that front. Applejack knows I was avoiding her, and from Twilight’s letter it seems like she’s a little concerned about me. But those are barely problems - the only thing I need to do is let things proceed as usual until we meet, and then just be boring and irrelevant enough that they never feel like going out of their way to find me again!

…And also make sure they don’t spot me doing anything remotely interesting, ever. No tinkering with artifice in public, no making a fool of myself without checking to see if they’re nearby, et cetera. Unfortunately, considering how much space my basement doesn’t have, I’ll still need to test some things outside, so… yeah, there’s no way I’m done running yet.

“Okay, so you’re basically just avoiding her like a normal pony now, instead of a fugitive,” Bon Bon said. “But hang on, why did Twilight leave a letter at your house?”

“What? Oh, she basically just left a book and a get-well-soon,” Lapis said, waving his hoof. “Apparently she’s had a Cascade before, too, so she left me the book that helped her deal with hers.”

Lyra winced. “Gosh. I don’t even wanna think about what hers was like-” She paused, her eyes going wide.

“What’s up?” Lapis asked, looking out the window.

Lyra slowly shook her head. “That’s funny, I could’ve sworn that table wasn’t there before.”

“‘Dear Princess Celestia,’” Twilight dictated, from the ground floor of the Golden Oak. Spike sat on a stool nearby, occasionally glancing over at Rarity, who stood a few paces away.

“‘I recently encountered one Lapis Print, a pony who seemed to have his heart set on never encountering me. So much so, that it took two months of living in Ponyville before I was even able to catch sight of him! This confused me enough that I ended up poking my nose into some of his affairs, even though a very good friend had already given me a perfectly reasonable explanation for his behavior. When I asked one of Lapis’ friends about him, I got the same explanation as before - only this time, I listened, and so I learned something very important.’

“‘Sometimes, when a pony is acting strangely around you, it pays to stop and ask yourself whether you’re the strange pony in the situation. Once upon a time, to most ponies, I was just one more student in Canterlot - but to some here in Ponyville, I’m somepony who saved Equestria, and that can be a lot to think about.’

“‘While I can’t say I’ve convinced Lapis that I’m just another pony, I think I only stand a chance of doing so now that I understand the problem. I look forward to solving it, and finding out what else I can learn.’

“‘Your faithful student, Twilight Sparkle.’”

Spike rolled up the letter, then took a deep breath, but Twilight held out a hoof. “Wait, don’t send that yet!”

Rarity raised an eyebrow. “Why, Twilight, whatever’s stopping you? From the sound of it, you’ve got this whole situation wrapped up in a neat little bow!”

“I’ve got to send these friendship reports once a week,” Twilight explained, “and I already sent this week’s. The way I see it, I can save this one for a rainy day.”

Spike grinned, rolling up the report and setting it atop the library counter. “Budgeting your effort - I like it!”

“Agreed,” Rarity said. “So, Twilight, darling, how did you manage to meet Mr. Print?”

“Well, I saw him chatting with Big Mac yesterday morning, and I wound up having the talk I mentioned with Big Mac a while later.”

Rarity nodded. “Mm-hm. And how was he?”

Twilight frowned, cocking an eyebrow. “Um, he didn’t look like he was in any trouble. A little tired, maybe, but that’s it.”

“Mm-hm,” Rarity said, nodding again. “And were you… impressed?”

Twilight started packing up her quill and inkwell. “He certainly seemed to have a good understanding of his repair spells. …Maybe I should look into learning some of those,” she added, levitating the boxy bulk of The Totaled Theories of Harmonick Resonance off the shelf and onto the library counter, then levitated a slightly larger, ornate book with a needle on the cover over to Rarity.

Rarity accepted the book, raising an eyebrow. “Yes, mending spells are quite useful in emergencies, though a little tricky. But Twilight, how did he look?”

Twilight frowned, turning back around to look at Rarity. “Um, like a unicorn? White coat, blue mane and tail, brown eyes and corona.” …Actually, now that I think about it, his color scheme wasn’t too different from-

Rarity sighed, then turned an exasperated grin upon Twilight. “Was he cute, darling?”

Twilight froze, her gut suddenly lurching as her ears flopped all the way back on her head. “What? No! Ew, ew, ew…” Twilight briefly pranced in place.

“Oh dear,” Rarity muttered, her eyebrows shooting up. “Was he really that bad?”

“Well, not exactly,” Twilight said, her ears remaining half-tucked back as she settled down. “He didn’t look creepy or disgusting or anything, it’s just… well, he reminds me a little of my brother, Shining Armor. I’m sure that’s not an issue for other ponies, but there’s no way I could think of him romantically.” Twilight shivered, a queasy grimace crossing her face. “Gross.”

“Ah,” Rarity said, nodding in understanding. “Say no more, darling, I understand completely.”

Spike snickered. “Yeah, you really grossed her out, Rarity. Gosh, Twilight, I haven’t seen you do the Spiders Dance since the first time I tried cooking without a recipe!”

Twilight blushed, then grinned. “For the record, Spike, you mixed maple syrup with ranch. You earned it.”

“…The ‘Spiders Dance?’” Rarity asked.

Spike chuckled, and Twilight rolled her eyes, then spoke. “He means this.” Twilight briefly repeated her prancing-in-place routine. “It’s just something I do when I get grossed out, but for some reason, Spike thinks it looks like I’m shaking spiders off my hooves.”

“Oh, ‘for some reason,’ huh?’” Spike asked, grinning and crossing his arms. “And here I thought you remembered why you learned all those concealment-breaking spells…”

“Yeesh,” Twilight muttered. “You cast an invisibility spell on one spider, and nopony ever lets you forget it.”

Rarity’s eyes widened in horror. “…Twilight, dear? What, in all of Equestria, could possibly possess you to create an invisible spider?”

“Oh, it gets better,” Spike began. “See, Twilight was trying to test whether enchanted creatures could pass on their enchantments to their offspring - y’know, to help her figure out how monsters like the Timberwolves got started. So, she grabs the first bug she can find, which turns out to be this random spider from a flowerbed, and…”

Twilight sighed, falling silent as Spike continued relating the story of how a poorly-written luminescence charm, a broken terrarium, and an unexpected clutch of spider eggs had resulted in Twilight’s permanent banning from the field of entomology. Honestly, as long as they’re not crawling on somepony, I think they’re a significant improvement over normal spiders. Out of sight, out of mind, after all…

Slowly, carefully, Twilight levitated her letter to Princess Celestia off the library counter and into a drawer. Twilight hadn’t really lied about why she’d held off on sending her letter - yes, she’d already sent in her friendship report for the week, and building up a backlog of completed work was always a good idea.

The problem was, that letter wasn’t really completed, and Twilight knew it darn well. Big Mac hadn’t said much, but he’d revealed something, and it hadn't answered any questions...

“And you’re sure he’s only been avoiding the six of us out of shyness, like you told Applejack?” Twilight asked.

“E-yup.”

“That’s it? There’s nothing more complicated to it?”

Big Mac was silent for a moment, then he shook his head. “Nope.”

Twilight paused. “What do you mean?”

Big Mac firmly shook his head. “That’s his business to tell, not mine. Ah can promise it don’t involve puttin’ Equestria or your friends in danger, but besides that, it ain’t mah place to share.”

“…Sure,” Twilight said, frowning. “I’ll just ask him… oh wait, that’s right, he avoids me and all of my friends like we’re contagious. Big Mac, I just want to know what’s going on. Could you please tell me, or at least give me a hint?”

Big Mac sighed. “…Nope. He ain’t told me the whole of it, either. Ah have a guess, but no proof. You want to know for sure, you’d better go talk to Lyra Heartstrings, or Bon Bon the confectioner down on Acorn Route.”

“Right,” Twilight said. “…Just out of curiosity, what’s your guess?”

“Nope.” Big Mac firmly shook his head again. “All Ah know is, whenever Ah mention bringin’ Lapis or his ideas anywhere near Applejack, he either clams up or starts ramblin’. Ah have a guess what that means, but Ah certainly don’t know…”

…And neither do I, Twilight thought, making sure Rarity wasn’t watching as she slid the drawer closed. I don’t know, not even a little. It's probably nothing, and I should probably leave it alone, but I need to get a better picture of this repair-pony. Why would he panic about Applejack, of all ponies? Honestly, she’s probably the least intimidating out of the six of us, except for Fluttershy-

“Hello, Twilight,” a voice said. Twilight looked up just in time to see Fluttershy walk into the library, closely followed by a cheerfully-humming Pinkie Pie. “Oh, am I interrupting something?”

“Not at all, Fluttershy,” Twilight said, Rarity turning away from a still-rambling Spike to look. “What’s going on?”

Fluttershy and Pinkie briefly exchanged a smile, then turned toward Twilight and spoke at once:

“Do you know any good places for a casual brunch?”

Author's Note

Patch Notes
- In Treading On Hooves, the letter "n" was used as a substitute for the word "in." The root of this issue has been traced back to phonetics, and has since been resolved. (ObsPerson)
- In the same chapter, massive obfuscation of at least one important scene was noted. Unfortunately, the cause of the issue is a matter of hardware rather than software - after 2 AM, the host server's power supply begins to grow unreliable, in large part because the hamster starts forgetting how to run straight in its wheel. Fixes are ongoing. (KKSlider)

Hey, guess whose story isn’t dead yet? Not gonna lie, I was getting a little burnt out, so I decided to slow my pace for a bit. That, and I had to prep for moving back into university, so further updates might be a little bit slower from here on.

So, now that the nuts and bolts are out of the way, first things first: I won’t beat around the bush here, Twilight’s disgust is genuine. No hidden layers, no perverse impulses, no confused associations, she just thinks it’d be gross to date somepony who looks like her brother.

Sorry to let some of you down - I did see a fair number of comments suggesting Twilight might have romantic inclinations, and given Rarity’s dramatization of their meeting and my prior mentions of romance not being off the table, it’s my fault for giving you that impression. Maybe Twilight might’ve had some of those inclinations before, but as soon as she made the connection between Lapis’ color palate and Shining Armor’s, those inclinations went poof - she just thinks it’d be gross, and it’s going to stay that way. I’m really not a fan of incestual themes in romance/smut/whatever else; and if you are, I wish you good luck finding a story that provides what you’re after, because Hold It Together won’t be one of them.

(Technically, I can't prove that Lapis' color palate wasn't chosen for this exact purpose. I can, however, imply that this will come up later, and none of you can stop me.)

Now, Lapis has finally, finally decided that being entirely absent is more suspicious than acting natural, in all given circumstances. He's also been given his first, brief taste of the Cutie Mark Crusaders' presence in Ponyville, which definitely isn't going to be his last or closer encounter. Fluttershy has, so far, talked Pinkie down from a party of potentially problematic proportions, while Twilight has decided that her suspicion is her problem, not Rarity's, and only maybe Applejack's. So that's five out of six - where's Rainbow Dash?

And finally, I'd like to officially clarify that I'm breaking up this story into multiple parts - how many is unclear, but at least two. This is Part One, and it'll end sometime around the Grand Galloping Gala, so... if you're looking forward to a conclusion, expect it then.

See you in the next one!

Best Number: A Wreath of Oopsie-Daisies

Entry Two, Lapis wrote, taking a few pre-emptive steps away from his most recent work of artifice.

- Objective: Observe the strength of mana’s tendency to attract itself by forming free-flowing mana into a ring, then testing how resistant it is to collapsing into a sphere.
- Hypothesis: Regardless of initial input strength, the initial ring formation will always collapse into a sphere.
- Method: Eight mana siphons were arranged in a ring within a copper framework, angled so their outputs form an octagon (which should roughly approximate a ring). For finer control than a raw mana siphon, the mana output of each pump was “pressurized” via the application of refractory crystals - in this case, further quartz - inside a focusing cone of reinforced aluminum plates.
- Results:

“…Let’s get some,” Lapis muttered, then he looked up at his work.

It was a six-foot-tall ring of tangled iron struts held upright by a large, flattish wooden stand, and while it didn’t look too spectacular, it definitely showed improvement. That wasn’t just a cliche, either - as Lapis traced the circumference of the ring, he could see the lumps and pits growing less frequent in the metal he’d shaped, as his skill at shaping it improved. The chunky, quartz-tipped mana siphons - all eight of them - were connected to each other by snaking bands of copper, all tracing to a large, gleaming nub of runed iron at the top of the ring.

The point of the device was to siphon mana from the telekinetic field of any unicorn that grabbed it, and concentrate mana into its center. Lapis knew full well that what he’d just made was not, under any definition of the word, a portal - but as he looked through the center of the structure, he had to admit it would be easy to pretend otherwise.

Slowly, gingerly, Lapis ignited his horn and began to exert a telekinetic grip on the iron nub at the top of the ring. Nothing happened, for one second, then three, then five. Then, after exactly seven seconds, the quartz crystals began to glow with the color of candlelight.

Lapis took a slow, deep breath as the glow intensified, then began to stream from each of the eight quartz crystals in narrow, steady lines. The lines pulsed as they met each other, then slowly, the angles began to fade, until in the center of the frame there was a stable ring of luminous, butter-yellow magic, rippling like a stream of water. To Lapis’ surprise, the ring didn’t collapse as it grew thicker, easily seeming to maintain its shape inside the support structure.

Then, from the wooden base of the structure, there was a snap. Lapis’ eyes widened, and he instantly relinquished his telekinetic grip on the iron nub at the top of the ring, but the magic still left in the device continued to flow. There was another snap, and Lapis yelped as a nail shot past his head in a dark blur, impacting the stone wall behind him with a sharp metallic ping.

And slowly, the metal support structure rolled right off its base, turning in an arc and accelerating toward Lapis, its struts clattering against the floor like a twisted drumbeat. Lapis dove to one side, the device continuing to accelerate as it thundered past him, bounced off the wall, and arced back around the room toward him-

Then, finally, the last of Lapis’ magic faded from the conduits of the device and the mana siphons fell dark, Lapis rolling to the side as the device crashed to the ground in the space he’d been laying only a second before. Lapis felt his ears flatten themselves against the back of his head as the device slid a few more feet across the floorboards, the corners of the metal struts loosing a hideous, crackling groan as they scraped deep ruts into the floor of the workshop.

I’ve gotta stop using wood for these things, Lapis thought, and a brief, hysterical chuckle shuddered free of his throat.

He got up, briefly inspected the base of the structure, and once again began to write:

- Results: Hypothesis was not supported - the free-flowing mana rapidly formed and maintained a ring until the shutdown of the testing device. However, roughly 3.5 seconds following siphon ignition, thrust was observed along multiple undesired vectors. The resulting multidirectional stress caused both of the stand’s two mounting points to fail, which allowed the pump ring to complete a self-propelled lap around the workshop via rotary locomotion before the last of the mana was drained from its conduits.
- Discussion: Mana’s tendency to attract itself does not seem to be nearly as important for its overall direction of motion as its momentum. Additionally, in light of the damage sustained to the workshop floor, and his own near-crushing, this researcher finds himself newly impressed by the importance of creating scaled-down designs for initial testing purposes. The only potential use for the siphon-ring design may well be in the entertainment industry, just in case Pinkie ever needs a six-foot-wide, several-hundred-pound Catherine wheel-

Lapis sighed, then crossed out the final line. Underneath it, he wrote: Further research required.

He looked up to stare at the device, a faint headache of magical exertion already building in his forehead. For a second, Lapis was half-tempted to pick it up and throw it against the wall. Better not - it’d probably break the wall, even assuming the damn thing doesn’t start back up again.

Lapis hadn’t been expecting the mana concentrator to do anything useful - maybe demonstrate the potential “stickiness” of mana, but that was it. Still, he couldn’t help feeling disappointed, to a degree that approached dread. Clearly, the quartz-based mana pumps were a bigger danger than he thought. Makes me wonder why the writer of that book thought it would be a good idea to let new artificiers make the damn things.

“I don’t know what I was expecting,” Lapis muttered.

Lapis stepped out of the closet and into his main storefront, glancing at the corner of his counter to see what his workload for the day would look like. To his surprise, there were only a few slips there, and he knew for a fact that his request board was clean.

I’m finally through the backlog, he thought, staring down at the trio of requests. A doorjamb, the stem of a wineglass, and a fence-post… that’s, what, two minutes’ work each?

That’s nothing. I… might actually end up with nothing to do for six hours.

“Huh,” he muttered. “…What am I gonna do?”

No answer was immediately forthcoming, so Lapis made his way outside. It was another perfect summer morning in Ponyville, with a chill breeze lazily washing over the streets, and the sun only just climbing into the sky. It wasn’t early, but Lapis still found himself struck by how empty the streets of Ponyville were during the early morning-

Lapis spotted a large, purple blotch of fabric rising into the sky, a bundle of familiar faces packed into the basket beneath it, and dove into a nearby alleyway. Shit. I don’t think they saw me, but I’ll still need to wait a minute-

…Wait a minute.

Lapis groaned, facehoofed, then stepped out of the alleyway and proceeded down the street as normal, glancing only briefly at the hot air balloon as it continued to rise into the sky. Twilight, Applejack, and Pinkie Pie were all packed into the wicker basket beneath the balloon, which looked a little cramped, but didn’t seem to impede the balloon’s ascent. Rarity was alongside them, and she seemed to be flying.

What’s going on there, anyway? Lapis wondered, spotting the enormous, translucent butterfly wings on Rarity’s back. Is there a magic contest up in Pegasus-land, or… Oh, wait, it’s the episode about Rainbow Dash’s competition thing. Right.

Lapis kept his eyes forward as he continued down the streets of Ponyville, making his way toward the fence-post he needed to fix. So that means the whole gang should be out of town for… at least most of the day, if not all of today. If I do come up with anything I need to test in an open environment, then today’s the day to do it.

Lapis still wasn’t used to the idea that he didn’t need to hide anymore - or at least, to hide as much anymore. Honestly, he wasn’t sure what worried him more about his present situation - the very real possibility that he’d already upset the timeline somehow, or the fact that he could apparently hide from Pinkie and Twilight through sheer force of reflex alone.

For now, he decided to focus on the more immediate problem - he had a light workload today, and the Element Bearers would be out of town, meaning that Lapis was a fencepost, a wine glass, and a doorjamb away from having an unexpected day off. And he had no idea what he was supposed to do with that time.

I think Bon Bon’s making lemon drops today, he thought. Lyra’s probably helping her, and you can only have so many folks in a kitchen before it starts getting crowded. Besides, if the gumdrops were any indication, me and confectionery don’t mix.

Lapis reached the fence post, carefully jammed the ends back together, and one flash of light and flare of heat later, he was a third of the way done with the day’s requests. Who else do I know… well, there’s the Mayor, but if I go talk to her, she might wind up dumping another job on me. That leaves Zecora, maybe, and Big Mac, probably.

…Big Mac, Lapis thought, starting toward the address listed for the doorjamb. Huh. Well, Applejack is out for the day, so there’s no risk I’ll run into her over there. And Big Mac does keep mentioning that he could use the help.

Lapis nodded, fixing the decision in his head. Alright. Guess I’m getting some artifice done, and then I’m checking in on Big Mac.

“Hey, Big Mac!” Lapis called, stepping into the barn at the center of the Apple family property. “You in here?”

It had been about two hours since Lapis had resolved to help the other stallion. In those two hours, he’d taken what he had learned from his… earlier incident, to construct what he hoped would be a more useful device. Once he’d wrapped up, though, he’d headed over to Sweet Apple Acres.

There were only a few brief seconds of scuffling in a corner of the barn, then- “E-yup.”

“Good,” Lapis said, grinning and heading over toward the corner. “Thought I might need to go into the orchard looking for you, Big Mac.”

“Don’t try it,” Big Mac said, standing up. “Ponies have gotten lost in there before, and they’ll keep gettin’ lost yet. What brings y’all over here, Lapis?”

“You know how you’re always saying that you could use a little help?” Lapis asked. “Well, this is it. I’ve got a light load today, and something tells me you don’t.”

Big Mac snorted, walking over toward Lapis. “Nope. Ah’d say you called it right - Applejack’s out an’ about today, an’ she left me an’ Apple Bloom to make the last sweep of the Cosmic Crisp orchards.”

“Lot of trees?” Lapis asked.

“E-yup. Ah expect y’all won’t be much for buckin’ the apples down, but if you’re willin’ to help me keep an eye out, an’ use your horn to finish off the trees what only have a few apples left in ‘em, Ah’d appreciate it greatly.”

“Least I can do,” Lapis said, grinning. “So which way to the Cosmic Crisp?”

Big Mac chuckled, turning back to the corner of the room. “Well, hold on, now, Ah ain’t got the cart out yet!” He began to dig though a small pile of assorted tools, and slowly, a smallish wagon began to emerge.

Lapis walked over, then started levitating the smaller tools out of the way. “So Apple Bloom isn’t much help?”

“E-yup,” Big Mac said. “She tries her hardest, but she’s only a small filly yet. Right now, though, she’s out with her friends somewhere, probably gettin’ into some mess.”

“Reminds me of my little sister,” Lapis muttered, pulling the last of the tools off the wagon, then helping Big Mac to tug it free of the pile and into open floorspace. The yoke dug into Lapis’ back in a way he wasn’t expecting, but he tried to tune it out.

Big Mac chuckled. “Ah thought y’all might have family. Where you from, anyhow? Your folks still there?”

Lapis grimaced, taking a second to get his story straight as he and Big Mac guided the cart out of the barn. “I’m from… pretty far out. I don’t know if Bon Bon’s told you yet, but I come from a spot called A-mare-ica, and I’m honestly not sure how I wound up getting to here from there.”

“Got lost?” Big Mac asked, cocking an eyebrow.

Lapis shook his head. “As far as I know, it was a magical accident. One second I was… well, not too far from home, and then the next I was right in the middle of the Everfree. …Hey, are these the Cosmic Crisp trees?” he asked, as he and Big Mac reached the bottom of the hill and started though a patch of apple trees.

Big Mac briefly glanced around, then shook his head. “Nope. Ah’ll say something when we get there. But Ah gotta admit, that’s quite the magical accident.”

“You’re telling me,” Lapis muttered.

“You ever miss your folks?”

“Every day,” Lapis said. “So, what exactly goes into cider-making, anyway? I’ve heard you mention sorting, juicing, and a couple other steps, but I’ve never heard you put them in order.”

“Well, Ah can’t tell y’all too much,” Big Mac said, grinning and shaking his head. “Family secrets an’ all. But the short version is somethin’ like this:

“First of all, there’s growin’ the apples. That takes half of spring, all of summer, and a fair bite of the fall, too. There’s a lot of little parts to it, managin’ frosts and bugs and drought, but at the end of it, you’ve got barrels and barrels of apples. Usually, we keep an eye on the market through growin’ season, to make sure we can get whatever spices we want ta try mixin’ in this year.

“Then, we gotta sort the barrels o’ apples through the first round, make sure everythin’ that should be together is together, and what should be apart is apart. Any bad apples we find, we toss, but we don’t take the extra-good ones out just yet.

“Then we take care of the leftover apples, what’re still in the orchard,” Big Mac said. “Speakin’ of which, these are the Cosmic Crisp now, so keep an eye out.”

Lapis nodded, training his eyes on the canopy as Big Mac continued to speak. “We get the leftovers, we sort those out, and the extra-good ones of those, we hold back and keep. Either for seeds, or for aging, to make the real good stuff with.

“After that’s done, and only after that’s done, comes the big day,” Big Mac said. “Cider-makin’ day. Get the barrels full o’ apples, this much of this sort and that much of that, toss out the bad ones, then cut up the good ones and juice ‘em in the press. Take the juice, add the spices and do a little bit more work, and just like that, it’s cider.”

“And that whole process happens for what we’re grabbing now, too?” Lapis asked, levitating a trio of apples down from their perch at the top of a tree. “For the ‘real good stuff?’”

“E-yup,” Big Mac said, nodding. “Day after this cart’s full up, Applejack and Ah’ll be whippin’ up a smaller cider barrel. Fresh as we can get it, for the Princess’ personal store.” Big Mac straightened as he said it, and Lapis could hear the glow of pride in his voice.

Lapis cocked an eyebrow, grinning. “Wait, really? Wow, that’s… actually awesome! You sure you want a non-expert grabbing these things down?” he added, gesturing to one of the apples with a hoof. “I’d feel terrible if I ruined a perfectly good royal-cider-apple.”

“E-yup,” Big Mar repeated, turning to deliver a resounding two-hoofed kick to one of the fuller apple trees. “Between your magic, and my buckin’ these trees, Ah’d say Ah’m the one more likely to bruise an apple. …Not that Ah will, mind you.”

“Well, yeah,” Lapis said. “Years of practice, right?”

“E-yup,” Big Mac said. “But that’s enough of me, anyhow. Are those Mend-All spells y’all use as easy as they look, or is there a little more to ‘em?”

Lapis paused, considering. “…They’re not too tough for me, but that’s just thanks to my Cutie Mark. Still, if I do a big one, or a lot of them in one day, then it starts getting a little rough.”

“And is that why y’all… y’know…” Big Mac waved a hoof back and forth. “Had that whole mess after them Parasprites came to town?”

“What? No, that was…” Lapis sighed. “So, I’ve got this workshop in my house, and the Parasprites ate through some important stuff in there. Some tools, some books, that sort of thing. I freaked out a bit, and it turns out that magic and freaking out don’t mix so well.”

“A workshop?” Big Mac asked. “Is that for whatever’s bein’ too stubborn to fix normally?”

“No, it’s for my artifice. Actually, here, hang on a second,” Lapis said, and then he began to dig through his saddlebags. “So basically, it turns out that you can get machines to do magic, too. It’s not easy work, but if you do it right…”

Lapis withdrew his hoof, and clasped around it was his latest project - another copper hoof-band, like the one Firefly had worn. The difference was that it only had four “gems,” one of which was another nub of iron, arranged in a rough diamond - iron, then two smoke-ambers, and finally, another quartz. “…It can pay off.”

“So you’re a jeweler?” Big Mac asked.

Lapis hesitated. “…Uh, maybe? I guess I’d need some gem-cutting equipment. This does a little bit more than look shiny, though. Hang on… actually, maybe take a couple steps back.”

Big Mac obliged, eying Lapis’ bracelet warily. Lapis took a deep breath, then trained his gaze to a spot on the ground a few dozen feet away. Then, slowly and deliberately, he wrapped his telekinetic grip around the iron nub of the bracelet. He felt the familiar jerk-and-weight sensation in his horn as the bracelet pulled magic from his reservoir, and the smoke-ambers flashed out-of-sync as Lapis’ magic flowed through each in turn, first the top, then the bottom. Finally, the quartz crystal blazed with sudden, candle-colored light, and the spell of the bracelet took effect.

“Whoa,” Lapis muttered, wobbling a little as a coat of his own magic wrapped over his body, lifting him about a foot off the ground. It felt bizarre - like he was swimming in a river of warm liquid a little denser than water, with a current too strong to fight. Then, with a speed that briefly blurred his vision, he lurched through the air until he was just above the spot of ground he’d been staring at when he activated the spell - and the coat of magic vanished with a pop like a bubble, Lapis yelping in surprise as he fell back to the ground.

“Huh,” Big Mac muttered. “Well, I’ll be! The bracelet do that all by itself?”

Lapis got up from the dirt, his hooves shaking a little as he brushed the dust off of them. “Whoa… Uh, not exactly. I had to feed it some of my magic, but once it had that, the whole thing with the floating was the bracelet. Same telekinesis we use to pick stuff up.”

“Huh,” Big Mac said. “So, what’s the point of makin’ it, then? Couldn’t y’all’ve floated yourself over there, no jewelry required?”

“Not so much, no,” Lapis said, Big Mac raising an eyebrow as Lapis walked back to the cart. “Unicorns usually have a hard time levitating other ponies. Our magic fields… argue with all the mana inside the other pony, and the other pony’s mana usually wins.”

Big Mac nodded slowly. “Well, Ah guess that’s why unicorn guards tend to go with swords an’ whatnot, instead of just pickin’ the troublemakers up and floatin’ them to the dungeons. But how come the bracelet stops your magic from arguin’ with itself?”

Lapis grinned. “That’s the thing - the only mana that a unicorn’s magic won’t argue with, is itself. No, the problem with trying to levitate yourself is… well, you’ve gotta concentrate, and it’s pretty hard to concentrate on anything when you’re floating, so what the bracelet does is concentrate for you. On top of that, the weight of whatever you’re moving has to go somewhere - normally, that’s either you or the ground you’re standing on, but since you’re the thing that’s floating, you have to pick something else. The bracelet does that, too - your weight is on the spot you’re trying to get to, even before you get there.”

Big Mac frowned, nodding slowly. “So… it ain’t good for flying?”

“Yeah, not so much,” Lapis said, his eyes widening as he suddenly imagined what would happen if you activated the bracelet while looking at the sky. This… is definitely an indoors-only item from now on, he thought, slipping it off his hoof and back into his saddlebag. “Think of it more like a… a bridge, or a ladder. It’ll take you from one spot on the floor, wall, ceiling, whatever, and then drag you over to another spot, regardless of whether there’s a way to walk between them normally.” It wasn’t exactly a grappling hook, but it was close enough for Lapis’ needs.

“Oh,” Big Mac said, his eyes widening. “Ah gotcha. So, is it only unicorns what can use it, or…”

Lapis paused, the weight of Big Mac’s question suddenly slamming into him. “You know…” he muttered, “I think I… could rig this thing up for an Earth-pony. It would have to charge from free-flowing mana between uses, and I’d need to add on a distance limit for safety’s sake, but… yeah, Big Mac. A couple tweaks, some training, and you could use something like this if you wanted.”

Big Mac raised a hoof and shook his head. “Nope. Ah got mah own hooves for walkin, and most ground around here ain’t got gaps big enough to need floatin’ over. ‘Sides, all that copper and whatnot don’t look cheap.”

“Cheaper than you think,” Lapis said, grinning. “And if you’re testing a prototype, I’m sure as hel- heck not gonna make you pay for it, but I hear you. Maybe… something a little less intense? Just some gizmo to grab whatever you’re looking at, and float it over to you?”

Big Mac shook his head again. “Nope. Ah ain’t got enough to grab ‘round here. But Ah appreciate the thought, Lapis, and Ah ‘spect somepony out there’ll be mighty glad if you decide to work in that direction.”

“Yeah,” Lapis said, the gears in his head already turning as he started pulling the cart again. “Huh.”

And as Lapis was preoccupied, he failed to notice four things: first, he didn’t see Big Mac briefly fixing him with that same careful, evaluating eye. The second, third, and fourth things he didn’t notice, however, wasted no time making themselves known.

“Hey, mister!”

Lapis blinked, a more fanciful design suddenly vanishing from his head. He looked around, then down, and saw a trio of small, smiling faces staring up at him.

“There y’all are,” Big Mac said, from next to Lapis. “Just in time, Apple Bloom.”

One of the three fillies, a meringue-yellow Earth-pony with a large red bow on her head, cocked her head in confusion. “Just in time for what?” she asked, with an accent identical to Big Mac’s.

“Ah need somepony to follow behind the cart, and make sure none of the apples fall off,” Big Mac replied. “Think you’re up to it?”

Apple Bloom opened her mouth to reply, but another of the three fillies - a bright-orange pegasus with a purple mane and tail - cut her off. “We hear you’re looking for somepony to test out some awesome magic gadgets?”

“…Uh, hi to you too,” Lapis said. “Also, what?”

The third of the three newcomers, an equally-tiny unicorn with a white coat and a swirly mane, was next to speak, her high-pitched, slightly-squeaky voice at odds with the formality of her tone. “Nice to meet you! I’m Sweetie Belle. This is Apple Bloom, and Scootaloo. We were trying to get our Cutie Marks in tree-climbing, and we just happened to overhear that you were looking for some volunteers.”

“I’m Lapis Print,” Lapis said, utterly baffled. He already knew exactly who these three were - his little sister had loved them even more than the Element Bearers. The Cutie Mark Crusaders. “And…”

The image of Lapis’ first artificiary project played back in his head, and suddenly he could almost hear the sound of a shard of wood shattering into splinters, only a few feet away from his head. “…Yeah, I’ll have to turn you down on that one. Artifice is no joke - stuff can explode, or catch fire, or even both. It’s really, really not safe for you, sorry.”

“Oh, don’t fret about that, we know all about fire safety!” Apple Bloom said, smiling and raising a hoof. “Miss Cheerilee told us all about it, after we tried to get our Cutie Marks in arrangin’ fireworks shows.”

“Yeah, she did,” Scootaloo muttered. Sweetie Belle briefly jostled Scootaloo with her shoulder, shaking her head - then she realized that Lapis was watching, and both fillies quickly copped wide-eyed, innocent smiles.

“What Apple Bloom ain’t filled you in on yet,” Big Mac said, grinning, “is that after that little near-miss, none o’ these three are allowed anywhere near Town Hall’s firework supplies, or any sort of hay-barn, ‘till about five years from now.”

Lapis had a sudden, horrifying mental image of every thatch roof in Ponyville wreathed in multicolored flames, the cheerful whistles of Catherine wheels doing their very best to drown out the screaming of terrified ponies. “So, yeah, no artifice-testing for any of you. Definitely not until you’re allowed near fireworks again, and at least not until you’re grown up.”

“Aww,” all three fillies chorused.

“Now, Apple Bloom,” Big Mac added. “You about ready to help with this cart?”

“Yes, Big Macintosh,” Apple Bloom said. “…Hey, Ah wonder if my Cutie Mark might be in cart-keeping?”

Lapis returned to his shop about an hour after that, and wasted no time heading back into the workshop, tucking away the grappling bracelet, and scribbling down a brief reminder to try modifying it for Earth-pony use. Then, he went back upstairs and started fixing himself an early dinner, pausing only briefly when he thought he’d heard his front door closing.

He had just finished when a knock came at his door. “Hey, Lapis! You in here?”

“Yep,” Lapis replied, pulling the door open with his magic. “Hey, Bon Bon. What’s going on?”

“Well, ponies have stopped buying citrus candies,” Bon Bon said, stepping inside. “And you know what that means, don’t you?”

“…Not so much, no,” Lapis said.

Bon Bon narrowed her eyes, grinning. “It means, fall is coming. I’ll need to start making cinnamon twists and caramel for candy apples… well, assuming the Apple family hasn’t juiced all their produce yet.”

“They haven’t,” Lapis said, sitting down at his dining table. “I was just over there, helping Big Mac get the last apples out of the Cosmic Crisp orchards-”

Bon Bon cocked an eyebrow, the beginnings of a scowl creasing the corners of her mouth. “Oh, were you?”

“Whoa, I definitely wasn’t overworking again” Lapis said, raising his hooves defensively. “Promise. I actually had a light day today, and I figured he could probably use a helping horn, so I went on over. We talked a little, I grabbed whatever apples weren’t worth kicking a tree over, and then I came home and made some chili. You want a bowl?”

Bon Bon looked down at the chili in front of Lapis, and her eyes widened as she spotted the faint rainbow-colored sheen across its surface. “…Not if you mixed the Happy Sauce into it. Honestly, I don’t know how you tolerate the stuff.”

“Mostly practice,” Lapis said. And also not being able to find actual chili peppers anywhere. “It’s a pretty bland kind of spicy, but you get used to it. How’s Lyra doing?”

“Peppy as ever,” Bon Bon said, grinning. “She’s landed herself another big performance, and she’s been practicing every chance she gets. How about Big Mac, is he holding up alright?”

“E-yup,” Lapis said, and Bon Bon snorted, rolling her eyes. “Seems like he’s getting ready for cider season in earnest, now. Apparently the leftovers I helped him grab today are getting held back for Princess Celestia’s personal cider stores.”

Bon Bon took a seat, her eyes glazing over as she stared into the distance. “Not just Apple family cider, but royal-quality Apple family cider…”

“Careful, you’ll start drooling,” Lapis said.

Bon Bon nodded, still gazing dreamily into the distance. “Most likely.”

“Speaking of drooling,” Lapis said, “it’s been a couple of days since we’ve gotten brunch. You think we could invite Big Mac along, this time?”

“Wait, what?” Bon Bon said, snapping out of her reverie. “…Well, look who’s finally getting over the Elements! I don’t know when he’ll be free, but as long as the Corner Cafe can feed him-”

Bon Bon cut herself off. “Actually, I just remembered something. I saw Pinkie Pie and Fluttershy in the Corner Cafe yesterday.”

“Oh, alright,” Lapis said. “I didn’t think they knew it existed.”

“You mean besides the time Pinkie chased you inside?” Bon Bon asked, raising an eyebrow. “But yes, it seemed like they were newcomers. Pinkie was acting a little stranger than usual, though.”

“How do you mean?” Lapis asked, a faint tingle beginning to rise in his gut.

“Well, first, she ate her whole stack of pancakes in one bite,” Bon Bon muttered. “But then she started zipping around the place with a measuring tape and a notepad. Then she started rambling about confetti, and… plates, I think? Palaces-? No, palates. Fluttershy somehow managed to calm her down a little after that, but-”

The floor shook, and Lapis’ bowl jumped at least an inch above the table, splattering his face with rainbow-tinged chili. Bon Bon got up from her chair, looking out the window. “What the hay! Was that an earthquake?”

Lapis was just standing up when the floor shook again, and this time, the vibrations were strong enough that both he and Bon Bon stumbled. One of the floorboards, Lapis saw, had come loose from the rest of the floor at the end, and a faint noise was coming from the gap underneath. A dull, rattling series of thumps, and a high-pitched noise like…

“Is somepony screaming?!” Bon Bon asked, her eyes widening.

Then, with a dry, crackling crunch, a vast blur of tangled black metal erupted through Lapis’ floor. It rolled past Bon Bon and through Lapis’ front door, trailing gray-green light like a comet, then hung a left and rolled out of sight.

“Uh-oh,” Lapis muttered.

“Lapis?” Bon Bon asked, her tone perfectly calm. “What the buck was that?”

“A failed project, and I’ve got three guesses who might have switched it on,” Lapis said, reaching for the closet door. It wouldn’t budge, and Lapis shook the door in frustration for a second or two, then rolled his eyes and shut the secret door through the wall, then hurried downstairs as he normally would. His suspicions were confirmed even before he reached the bottom of the stairs, as a trio of high-pitched voices started speaking all at once-

“…I just grabbed the shiny part, I didn’t think it would move!”

“…We were just looking around, and all of a sudden…”

“…Ah was the one who put us up to it, Ah swear!”

“Stay here,” Lapis said, ignoring the three fillies as he grabbed the grappling gauntlet off of his workbench. He glanced up through the hole in his workshop ceiling, briefly considering the idea of using the bracelet to levitate up through the hole, then decided against it and hurried back up the stairs.

“Which way did it go?” Lapis asked Bon Bon, as he rushed back into the room.

“It was heading toward Cantering Boulevard,” Bon Bon said. “Was it the Cutie Mark-”

“Yes,” Lapis said, heading for the door. “Later. Right now, we’ve got a runaway metal wheel to catch.”

“Right,” Bon Bon sighed. “Anything I should know, before we start chasing after it?”

“Uh, don’t let any unicorns grab it with magic?” Lapis said.

“Uh-huh. Alright, let’s stop this thing.”

Lapis had almost been hoping he wouldn’t be able to tell which way his creation had gone. To his dismay, its path of destruction was clearly visible - he could see exactly where the struts of the rolling device had dug into the dirt road, carving up a smattering of small ruts at odd angles. Lapis followed after them at a gallop, Bon Bon close behind.

He rounded a corner at speed, and finally managed to catch sight of the thing as it rolled right past the open door to Twilight’s library. Lapis’ heart almost stopped for a few seconds, but the device kept rolling right past Twilight’s house. As Lapis galloped past the door, somepony stepped out of it and began to gallop alongside him.

“Well, Ah was goin’ ta ask whether you’d seen Apple Bloom,” a familiar voice said. “Somehow, Ah don’t think Ah need to.”

“Oh, hey, Big Mac,” Bon Bon said. “So, how’s your day been?”

“Howdy,” Big Mac replied, giving Bon Bon a confused look for a second or two. “Uh, a little surpisin’ so far.”

“Oh, really? Mine, too!”

“The thing we’re chasing, it’s a little like the bracelet,” Lapis said, trying to ignore the stitch that was building up in his side. “It runs off the magic of whatever unicorn grabs the device. If you see a unicorn trying to pick it up, don’t let them, or it’ll just keep going.”

“What even is this thing?” Bon Bon asked, Lapis wincing as the device collided with a house with enough force to gouge a few trails in its siding, then bounced and hung another turn.

“Mana compressor,” Lapis said. “Experimental design, not working out great so far. Can we not talk so much? Kinda getting out of breath here.”

Bon Bon didn’t reply as they rounded another corner, and Lapis was relieved to see that the mana compressor had finally exhausted the magic inside its system, and now appeared to be rolling by the power of momentum alone. Unfortunately, it was now trying to roll uphill at an angle, and despite Lapis’ fervent hopes that it would just fall on its side and be done, the compressor just turned in a slow, smooth arc before beginning to roll downhill again, right toward-

“Big Mac, look out!” Lapis yelled, but Big Mac was already moving, taking a few careful steps that put him just out of the compressor’s path. Then, Big Mac snorted and set his jaw, his eyes narrowing in focus - and as the compressor rolled past him, he reared onto his front legs and kicked the top of the compressor like an apple tree. His hooves struck the iron with an echoing thock. The compressor clanged, wobbled, then fell to one side, kicking up a cloud of dust as it skidded across the soft earth.

That was at least a couple hundred pounds of iron, Lapis thought, and he just… kicked it over.

“Wait, Bon Bon?” someone asked, and Lapis turned just in time to see Lyra trotting up the hill. “Lapis? …Big Mac? What the hay was that big noise?”

“Us. Catching Lapis’ runaway experiment,” Bon Bon said, gingerly tapping the side of her hoof against the compressor. “Nice kick, Big Mac.”

“Thank you kindly.”

“Yeah,” Lapis said, his lungs still burning a little. “Good work, Big Mac. Can I ask you to watch this thing while I get back to my shop and get the tools to dismantle it?”

“E-yup.”

“Make it quick,” Bon Bon said. Lapis nodded, then turned back toward his shop-

“Uh, hang on a second,” Lyra said. “You think maybe there’s an easier way?”

Lapis glanced back. “What do you mean- WAIT, LYRA, PUT THAT DOWN!”

“I haven’t even picked it up yet,” Lyra said, as the orange glow of her magic wrapped around the surface of the compressor. “You gonna lend me a horn, or- ow!”

Bon Bon bopped Lyra on the tip of her horn, and the glow of magic faded from Lyra’s horn at once, but the damage was already done - the pumps of the compressor flared to life with Lyra’s fire-colored magic, and the ring of iron lurched in the dirt, kicking up a cloud of dust as Lyra, Bon Bon and Big Mac took a few quick steps back. Then, with a motion like a coin spin in reverse, the compressor shuddered upright and began to roll back into town, looking for all the world like some kind of flaming war machine as it crashed and clattered its way through Ponyville.

“Oh, wow,” Lyra said, as the screaming began. “Uh, you didn’t make that, right, Lapis?”

Lapis didn’t bother to answer, taking off down the hill at a gallop, Big Mac close behind. Ahead of them both, the compressor rattled through the market street of Ponyville, crashing through empty stalls and crates, ponies gaping wide-eyed as it rolled by or else yelling as they ran away, Lapis turning his head to dodge a spray of splinters and mustard from a newly-shattered food cart. The device thundered toward Twilight’s house again, just as the door opened and Spike walked out, dusting off his claws-

“LOOK OUT!” Lapis yelled-

Spike paused in place, turning to look, his eyes widening as the jagged wheel of black iron and flaming magic bore down on him-

Lapis ignited his horn-

“GAH-HA!” Spike yelped, as a coat of brown magic wrapped around him for just a second, just long enough to toss him back into the library and out of the compressor’s path. The snap of Lapis’ telekinetic field carried back into Lapis’ horn with a brief jolt of pain, and his hoof slipped in the dirt. The whole world lurched, and the next thing Lapis knew, he was looking up at the sky, his momentum grinding him against the dirt road on his back for two of the slowest seconds he’d ever experienced.

“Ow,” Lapis wheezed.

Big Mac thundered to a halt at his side. “Lapis, you alright?”

“Yeah, I’m good,” Lapis said, and he tried to sit up - instead, his back remained firmly on the ground, and he only raised his hind legs into the air. Right, I guess I don’t have as much weight in my legs anymore, huh?

“Well, y’all better get movin’, then,” Big Mac said, lowering his head and rolling Lapis upright. “That doohickey’s gettin’ away fast.”

“Right,” Lapis said, gingerly shaking his limbs as he turned in the direction he’d originally been running. As he turned, he glanced through the open door of Twilight’s library, and saw Spike sitting up out of a pile of books, looking a little dazed but unharmed.

“Sorry!” Lapis called, and then he took off again.

Spike watched him go, confused. Then he looked down, saw what he’d landed in, and groaned.

“Aw man, not again,” he muttered.

Lapis rounded a corner and began galloping out of town, Big Mac thundering along beside him. He shortly managed to catch sight of the compressor - some other unicorns must’ve tried to stop it with magic, because the flames trailing from the mana pumps were now an eye-catching mixture of lime-green and magenta as it rumbled its way through the grassy fields outside of town. Haven’t seen any picnickers so far, but that won’t last forever - gotta stop this thing, fast.

“Another hill comin’ up,” Big Mac said. “Same as last time?”

Lapis nodded, too focused on breathing to speak, and together they began to gallop up the slope. Slowly, the magic in the compressor began to flicker and die, and the compressor’s pace lessened as it crested the first crest of the hill, crossed a small plateau, and began to turn as it started up the second peak.

“Here?” Lapis said, panting for breath as he stopped at the far edge of the plateau. “Kick from here?”

“E-yup,” Big Mac said, narrowing his eyes and getting into position. “Together, on three. One!”

The compressor finished turning, and began to rumble back down the hill.

“Two!”

-Lean onto my front hooves, push off the ground with my back hooves, and then snap them up and kick out-

“Three!”

Lapis and Big Mac leaned forward and kicked out, and Lapis felt a jolt of pain spike up his shins as his hooves hit the iron - then, he hit the ground on his belly, having forgotten to pull his legs back after he kicked.

The compressor wobbled, slowing down even further, but it was still rolling toward the edge of the plateau, toward the start of the next downhill. Lapis froze as he realized what was about to happen, that they hadn’t stopped it-

And then he blinked, and the compressor thunked against something solid - then fell, slowly, to the side, and hit the ground with an echoing crash.

“Ah think we got it,” Big Mac said. “…Y’all don’t kick things much, do you?”

“…Honestly?” Lapis sighed. “First time.”

Big Mac’s eyebrows shot up, then he nodded. “Well, for a first time, Ah’d say that was mighty fine work.”

Slowly, Lapis grinned, shaking his head in bewilderment. “Thanks, Big Mac. I tried.”

Lapis got up, then turned and walked over to his creation. The device’s rampage had bent its support structure almost entirely out of shape, and as he watched, one of the more mangled struts fell off, clattering against its fellows for a moment before hitting the ground. Lapis picked up the strut and looked over the compressor’s side until he found the iron activation nub. Then, angling the spare strut like a crowbar, he pried the nub from the device.

“Makin’ sure it doesn’t get back up?” Big Mac asked, walking over.

“Yep,” Lapis said, and then he ripped out the copper strips, just in case. “That should do it.”

Then, slowly, he looked up at Ponyville to survey the damage.

Bon Bon and Lyra were coming up the hill, which was good. There was also a visible path of destruction through town, which was less good. Even from here, Lapis could see dozens of broken stalls in the market street, splintered boards jutting through torn tarps at sharp, unpleasant angles. There were long, narrow chunks carved from the walls of four houses that Lapis could see, and at least one fenced porch had been made to resemble a mouth full of broken, jagged teeth. Even now, Lapis could just make out a few ponies emerging from their houses, their ears flopping back and their eyes growing wide as they surveyed the wreckage.

“Well, it could be worse,” Lyra said, and Lapis turned to look at her. “I mean, nopony was hurt, nothing’s on fire… honestly, I bet everything will be back to normal in just a couple days!”

“Lyra,” Bon Bon said, cocking an eyebrow. “You’re talking to the pony who’s got to make things normal again.”

“Ooh,” Lyra said, her ears flopping back on her head. “Right, yeah. Um, sorry, Lapis.”

“Uh-huh,” Lapis said, his eyes tracing the length of the market street again. At one hour to a stand, that’s… at least a week’s work. Maybe two.

Or none, if I get fired. Oh, I’m so getting fired.

I don’t know what I’m gonna do. What the hell am I gonna do?!

“So, um, Big Mac,” Lyra said, scuffing her hoof in the grass. “Were you the one who kicked over the, um, thingy here?”

“Nope,” Big Mac said, and Lapis was jolted back to reality by the weight of a hoof patting him on the back. “It was me and Lapis here - Ah couldn’t have done it without him.”

“Yeah, I saw,” Bon Bon said, and Lapis paused - something about her tone sounded off. “Still, it’s a lucky thing that park bench was here.”

“…What park bench,” Lapis said, looking up. Bon Bon was staring right at him, and as Lapis watched, she nodded toward the side of the compressor closest to the hill. Lapis looked - and sitting there, crushed to splinters where the compressor had rolled into it, was a short, squat park bench made from dark, familiar, and faintly reddish wood.

Lapis felt a creeping chill prickle up his spine, and he took a pre-emptive step away from the mimic. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Lyra frown as she glanced between Lapis and the bench, then her eyes widened in comprehension.

Big Mac noticed too, looking over at Lapis with concern. “Hey, what’s the matter?”

“Get away from that bench,” Lapis said, not taking his eyes off the mimic, his heart beginning to pound in his chest.

“Whoa, slow down,” Lyra said. “I think it’s a good thing! It stopped the… thingy from going downhill, right?”

“Yeah, maybe,” Lapis said. “I don’t know.”

“Either way, it’s broken,” Bon Bon added. “Lapis, I think we’re safe.”

“I don’t know,” Lapis repeated, and something in his chest began to grow hot.

“Alright, what in tarnation is goin’ on here-”

“I don’t know!” Lapis snapped, and Big Mac’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. “I… A lot, Big Mac. There’s a lot going on. I’m sorry for yelling, I’ll explain as soon as I can, but-”

Somewhere behind Lapis, something exploded, loud enough that Lyra jumped and Lapis gasped - and all of a sudden, Lapis couldn’t breathe. The heat in his chest surged, building to a throbbing, charring wave, and as it began to rise up Lapis’ chest and toward his neck, he felt his hooves leave the ground.

“Lapis!” Lyra yelped, but the mana continued to rise in Lapis’ neck. His lungs burned, and his vision began to go white, a rainbow-colored arc sweeping across the sky. No. No, have to get it under control, come on-

As Lyra turned to Big Mac and Bon Bon, saying something about waves and magic, Lapis tried to stop the magic from rising up his head, but it didn’t work, it didn’t even slow his mana down. No, no, no, not again no no it’s-

“Lapis, do something!” Lyra yelled, as a knot of magma began to shudder behind the base of Lapis’ horn.

-all broken it’s all wrong it’s my fault and I can’t make it right-

“Anything! Tell the magic what to do-”

-can’t I just fix something, anything, please!

-And suddenly, Lapis could see, and breathe, and he screamed as a wave of candlelight-colored magic ripped itself free of his horn. Lyra and Big Mac yelped as it washed over them, then dissipated after a few yards. Lapis fell to the ground, his head throbbing with heat, bracing himself for the next wave…

And it never came.

“…Did it work?” Bon Bon asked.

“I think so,” Lyra said. “Hey. Lapis, you alright?”

…Am I alright? His horn still hurt, an awful sharp-throbbing pain like a dentist’s hook catching on a cavity, and his knees felt weak as he climbed to his hooves. “I… think so. Man, I've really gotta stop doing this- whoa!”

Lapis almost fell as one of his knees gave out, and suddenly Lyra was there, wedging him upright with her shoulder. “Whoa, easy. That was… kind of a lot, you should probably take it slow. Maybe get some bed rest?”

“No kiddin’,” Big Mac said. “Was that the whole Cascade thing you mentioned, Bon Bon?”

Bon Bon shook her head. “I don’t think so. That had more than one wave, and… well, I can’t spot any unusual organization.”

“It definitely wasn’t,” Lyra said, and Lapis thought he heard a faint tinge of excitement in her voice. “He channeled it.”

Lapis frowned, wincing at the pain in his horn. “I did… what?”

“Okay,” Lyra began. “So the reason that Cascades are bad is that they’re given super-vague instructions, right? They have access to your whole reservoir, and they’re basically intent on doing whatever they can do. So they try to do anything, and they keep doing that until they eat every drop of magic in your body. But, if you can give the Cascade some better instructions before it gets started…”

“…Then it’ll complete those instructions, without burning through all my mana,” Lapis finished. “Lyra, that’s… incredible. I owe you, big-time.”

“Oh,” Big Mac said. “Well, that explains how that bench got fixed. …Ah’m still wonderin’ what’s the matter with that, by the way.”

Lapis froze, and he felt Lyra tense against his foreleg - then, he sighed. That’s what I fixed? Really?

I… guess this is the best chance it’s had to get me, and it didn’t take it.

“You know what?” Lapis said, pointedly not looking back at the bench. “Honestly, it’s probably okay. Can I tell you on the way back to my shop?”

“Works for me,” Big Mac said.

“Alright,” Lapis began, as he, Lyra, Bon Bon, and Big Mac started down the hill. “So, when I went on vacation to Amberhoof…”

Big Mac listened through the whole tale, and by the time Lapis had finished, they were just about to reach his shop again.

“So this ‘mimic’ critter,” Big Mac said. “It’s always made of that same kind of-”

“There you are! Oh, thank goodness,” a new voice said, cutting Big Mac off mid-sentence. Lapis looked up and saw Mayor Mare walking toward them, a curler still in her mane. “Lapis, I don’t know if you’ve seen what’s happened, but the whole town’s a mess! Ponies have been rambling to me about some kind of big, metal wheel, but I haven’t seen it yet, and the Elements are out of town!”

“…Yeah,” Lapis said, stopping in front of his door as Bon Bon stepped inside. “About that whole ‘metal wheel’ thing? Big Mac and I stopped it, it’s in the fields over that way.”

Mayor Mare heaved a deep, relieved breath. “Oh, thank goodness,” she repeated. “And, well, thank the two of you, too, of course. Lapis, I don’t suppose you have any idea what happened, or how it happened?”

Lapis opened his mouth to speak, but at that moment, Bon Bon pushed his door open again. “We do. But let’s start with these three, first.”

Slowly, the Cutie Mark Crusaders emerged from Lapis’ house, their ears flopped back and their gazes low. Mayor Mare looked down at their remorseful faces and sighed, pushing her glasses back up her face. “Oh. Say no more, Lapis, I understand completely. Now, young fillies, what did I tell you about breaking into places?”

“That it’s not safe,” Scootaloo said, looking off to the side.

“Exactly,” Mayor Mare said, nodding. “And how about messing with other ponies’ tools, especially when you don’t know how they work?”

“But how else are we gonna figure out whether they’re our talent or not?” Applebloom asked.

“By waiting,” Mayor Mare said, “until the ponies who do know how to use those tools agree to give you a guided lesson. Because if you don’t, then ponies might not be willing to give you any guided lessons at all. Now, what do you three have to say for yourselves?”

The Cutie Mark Crusaders sighed, then turned to face Lapis. “We’re sorry,” they chorused.

“Good,” Mayor Mare said. “Now. Let’s get you back to your homes, so you can explain yourselves to your family.”

“Ah can take Apple Bloom,” Big Mac said. “Ah’ve got a few words we need to share.”

Apple Bloom swallowed, scuffing the ground nervously with her hoof, and suddenly, Lapis couldn't remain silent. "Wait," he said.

Everypony involved turned to look at Lapis. “What’s up?” Lyra asked.

“…Listen,” Lapis began, making an effort to keep his ears upright. “I’m the one who built that mana compressor in the first place, and I’m the one who set it up to run off the mana of any unicorn that grabbed it. Honestly, this whole mess is more my fault than theirs. I’m not thrilled they broke into my house, but honestly, I’d been neglecting safety standards in my workshop for a while now. It had to come back to bite me at some point.”

“Oh. Well, I appreciate your honesty, Lapis,” said Mayor Mare. “However, I would argue that it’s very much not your fault. These three fillies seem to have a knack for finding the quickest way to get into the most trouble, and today that meant they went through you.”

Lapis shook his head. “I still should’ve been more careful with my work. Just… go easy on them if you can, alright?”

Lapis heard Bon Bon sighing over his shoulder as Mayor Mare met his eyes. “…I suppose,” Mayor Mare eventually said, “you do make a fair point. I’ll be sure to fill in these fillies’ famililies-”

Mayor Mare paused, then chuckled. “‘Fami-lilies?’ Goodness. Sorry, I’ll try again: I will make sure that these fillies’, families, are filled in on the whole situation. But if any angry relatives show up on your doorstep, I’m afraid you’ll have to deal with it yourself.”

“Then I guess I will,” Lapis said. “…Assuming I’m home when they come knocking. It looks like I’ll have a lot to do.”

“Then I guess I’ll help them schedule an appointment,” Mayor Mare said, a grin flashing across her face. “That is, assuming they ask. Big Mac, since you’re here, do you think Granny Smith will need to book a date and time?”

“Nope.”

“Well, if you’re sure, then I’d better be on my way. Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo still need to get back to their homes,” Mayor Mare said. “I’ll speak with you about repairing the damage tomorrow morning, Lapis, so don’t get started until I do.”

“I guess I’ll see you then,” Lapis said, as Mayor Mare turned and walked away.

As soon as she was out of earshot, Lapis let out a relieved sigh. “Well, I don’t think I’m fired. That’s good.”

“E-yup.”

“I have to say,” Bon Bon said. “I wasn’t expecting you to own up to the compressor in front of the Mayor. Especially not if you were concerned about your job security.”

“Yeah!” Applebloom chimed. “Thanks, mister!”

“Don’t thank him yet,” Big Mac said, cocking an eyebrow. “Ah’ll let you get off easy, but that sure don’t mean you’re gettin’ off free.”

“Look, if it’s between my job security and the safety of others, it barely counts as a choice,” Lapis said to Bon Bon, turning toward the door of his house. “But yeah, that probably wasn’t the smartest move. Hey, I wonder if all that chili’s cold…”

As Lapis turned his back on Big Mac and began to head inside, something odd happened. Once again, that same careful, evaluating look appeared on Big Mac’s face. But this time, whatever had been shifting inside of that look finally seemed to click into place, as Big Mac concluded his calculations and sealed the results with a slow, careful nod.

“E-yup,” Big Mac muttered, so quietly that nopony but Lyra heard.

Author's Note

Hey, welcome back! Second two-week gap in a row, woo - three cheers for getting settled in at college!

So first off: yes, twelve is the best number. I don’t care about lucky or unlucky numbers, I just think it’s neat. For starters, it’s why imperial measurement is better than metric: you can take any given whole number of feet, and split it into not only two even, whole numbers of inches, but also three. Or four, even. Try to tell me you can do the same with meters and centimeters. I dare you. I double dare you. It’s also the number of donuts in (most) donut boxes, which comes in handy when you’re splitting a box of donuts between two people. Or three. Or four. Honestly, for utility’s sake alone, our entire numbering system should be based off of twelves, but no, Grug the caveman couldn’t be bothered to come up with two more shapes, so here we are, stuck with tens.

(If you like tens, it’s only because you’ve never known anything better. Dare to dream. Reach for something more. Forsake the filthy decimal point; embrace 12, be free of 2.5 and 3.3333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333-)

69 is also pretty nice. Anyway, onto the actual main topic of this note: the giant gap between uploads. Like I mentioned, I've just moved back into college, and getting adjusted has taken a little bit of time. I still want to do weekly uploads if I can, though - the thing is, if I do, they might turn out smaller. So if the chapters from here on out are sitting at 5k words each, that's why.

And finally: where we are in the story. This was another chapter that I had a vision for, and believe me, getting it right turned out to be a little tough. I must've rewatched Sonic Rainboom at least four times, trying to make sure that Scootaloo wasn't in Cloudsdale for the episode. On top of that, introducing the grappling gauntlet and setting up the first confirmed appearance of Chester were priorities, considering that Lapis is shortly going to embark on the next chapter I have a vision for: exploring the Castle of the Two Sisters.

See you then!

Missing Elevator Button: Check

Author's Note

Hey, everypony! So, before the rest of this chapter: shout out to my campus’ tech store guy, who was cool enough to lend me the store’s USB-C to Ethernet adapter for the day, so I could upload the following two chapters a bit sooner than I was expecting to! (And also, y’know, do some less important stuff like check my email, and do my homework.) So yeah, technical difficulties were happening on my end, I made a blog post about it, but they’re done now. …I think.

Also, I’ve got like 99% of another chapter sitting in my folders right now. It’s disagreeing with my editing techniques, though, so it might get uploaded tomorrow.

Missing Elevator Button: Check

He was alone, and in the dark. Luckily, one of those problems was easily fixed.

He grasped one of the small hand-flares at his side and tossed it forward. It ignited mid-air with a crackling hiss, blue light flashing out to reveal a narrow, natural stone passage, the flare's metal frame clinking gently against ghostly pale stone. He raised his weapon, then advanced down the cave, tossing additional hand-flares as needed, his hooves ringing out like small, rhythmic hammer-blows against the rocky floor below.

Eventually, the passage opened up, revealing a much larger room. The walls and ceiling were dotted by glowing, humming green crystals, and small patches of light-gray-and-green barnacles crusted the corners and walls of the space. He raised his flare gun and pulled the trigger, and a second later, a massive section of the shadow gave way to brilliant white light, exposing the sheets and ledges of the cave - along with the glittering veins of red crystal that he'd been hoping to see.

"MOLLY!" he called, and a short metal spike with a blinking blue light appeared beside him with a crunch. He listened, but didn't hear the beeping call he was expecting, or even the faint rhythmic clanking of the robotic minecart's mechanical legs. Oh well, that probably meant she was just far off - given time, she'd arrive.

He set to work, grappling to stand atop the vein of red crystal and chipping away at it with his pickaxe. For obvious reasons, the section he stood on was the last one he broke, and he was already grappling toward the next vein before he hit the ground.

By the time he'd cleared out the cavern, Molly still hadn't arrived. And, to make matters worse, he'd just spotted one of his main objectives - from a section of the wall in an isolated corner of the room, there sprouted a large patch of what looked like purple roots. Much as he would rather have waited for Molly to arrive, he knew that the longer he stayed, the more difficult survival was going to become.

So, he approached the roots and began to swing his pick. The stone squelched as it gave way, and the roots tore free with wet pops that sent rivulets of dark fluid leaking across the floor of the cavern. After a few chunks, the stone vanished entirely, revealing a pocket of dark, squishy, fibrous substance that almost felt like flesh. He kept digging, until finally, his prize popped free of its bed: a key-ring bearing a single key and a dongle, both branded with a logo that changed every time he blinked.

The whole cavern shook, and in the deepest depths of the cave, there came a howling wail that only grew louder with every echo. As he stepped into the cavern proper once again, the flares on the ceiling flickered and died, just as the stone began to shift on a patch of the ceiling. He equipped his flare gun and fired.

When the light of the first flare passed over the patch of churning stone, it revealed a living carpet of teeth and carapace and long, pointed legs. In the light of the next flare, the mass of enormous bugs began to crawl down the wall toward him.

He pulled a pair of pistols to his side, took aim, and fired. The bullets disappeared into the tide of fangs and legs without apparent effect - until he reloaded, and a wave of bugs shattered into pale carapace and green goo.

He kept firing. He retreated along the edge of the cave as the bugs advanced, trying to kite them around the edge of the cave, but they just kept coming. Shouldn't there be a drone here, helping him to shoot them down? Shouldn't Molly have arrived by now?

There were just too many of them. He grabbed a canister off his hip and tossed it into the center of mass, and the swarm turned on itself in a wash of yellow-green gas. He fired a few volleys into the mass from his pistol, but they barely made a dent - more of them were erupting from the ground, and he lobbed another grenade into the mix, hoping to come up with a strategy while the bugs were busy eating each other.

The bugs were the wrong color, he realized. They were supposed to be various shades of brown, but instead, these came in two color patterns. Some were bright green, and the rest were a deep purple. And despite his knowledge that the color schemes were wrong, they felt somehow familiar.

A rolling blur of flame and ink-black carapace, somehow more jagged than it should be, erupted from a tunnel at the far end of the cavern and careened right toward him. He grappled over top of it just as the last of the gas faded into wisps, and the swarm turned towards him all at once. Grimacing, he hurried into the tunnel that the rolling bug had come from, almost slipping on the steep downhill of the cavern. Behind him, something loosed a deep, ululating roar, and he groaned in exasperation. A Bulk Detonator was the last thing he needed right now.

...Or was it?

He hurried down the steep hill of the cavern, and as he heard the crackling rumble of the rolling bug closing in behind him, a fear that was far stronger than it should've been. He felt his heart begin to race in his chest as the ground trembled beneath his hooves, his vision darkening and his knees beginning to jitter as the living boulder behind him grew ever closer, waves of heat rolling off its flaming chitin. And somehow, the only thing he could think of was a number, a five-digit number that began with an eight and rested just above his signature on a piece of paper.

He was getting so damn tired.

The exit to the tunnel opened ahead of him, and with a yell, he aimed his grappling hook and pulled the trigger, the air of the larger cavern blessedly cool against his face as he rocketed ahead of the boulder. He turned and unloaded his pistols, reloading and diving out of the way, and part of the roller disintegrated into a shower of green gore and black iron, which clattered against the stone to his side.

There was no time to rest. The bugs poured from the cavern entrance, and as he turned his pistols upon the horde he found them empty. Swearing, he switched to his grappling hook and shot to another edge of the cavern, firing off the last of his flares before grappling away from the half-shattered roller again.

His legs were shaking, and he could barely run, but he wasn't without firepower. Not yet. The long, slender rifle slung across his back was a precision tool, and though it couldn't hold back the swarm, he had another option.

The tide of familiar-colored bugs continued to pour into the cavern, and as he grappled around the edges of the cavern, they formed into a tight bunch at the center of the cavern. The last stragglers emerged just as he passed the entrance to the cavern, and he halted their screaming pursuit with the last of his grenades, already grappling away as they turned upon each other again.

A section of the wall disintegrated, and for just a moment, he stumbled to a halt as he saw the fiery, throbbing bulk of the gigantic bug. Its face was all wrong - instead of the massive maw of crooked, jagged teeth, it had a face that was nauseatingly wrong, and yet too familiar to deny. He knew that snub muzzle, knew the gray streak in its mane and the bags beneath its eyes. Lapis saw them in the mirror every morning. He was dreaming, wasn't he?

Lapis continued grappling around the edge of the cavern. Midair, he raised the rifle and planted shot after shot into the massive bug that wore his face. As one of the glowing, pulsing warts on its back shattered into goo, the Bulk opened its mouth, but instead of roaring, it whispered, and those whispers echoed around the cave more forcefully than a scream.

"You've failed," the Bulk said, and Lapis gritted his teeth as he kept shooting. "They're already drowning."

Lapis dove to the side as the roller rattled toward him, then grappled away just as the Bulk's legs came down, a wave of flame washing out from the thing in a circle as Lapis spun and aimed his rifle.

Another wart shattered. "Can you hear them?" the Bulk asked, turning to glare at Lapis. "They're asking what's for dinner. Tonight, it's breakfast cereal. Tomorrow, it'll be nothing at all."

"Okay, that's enough out of you," Lapis said, raising the rifle again. "Shut up, please."

The Bulk didn't even stumble as the bullets hit its side, and Lapis was forced to grapple away from the screaming, green-and-purple tide of smaller bugs.

"They will," the Bulk said.

Lapis grimaced, fighting down a shock of annoyance and dread, and pulled the trigger again. The last of the Bulk's warts shattered, but it continued toward him as he kept circling the cave, the still-living roller hot on his heels.

"They'll shut up," the Bulk said, ignoring the hail of bullets sinking into its body, "and it'll be your fault. You signed that paper, and now that you're gone forev-"

The Bulk halted, as a pair of white blasts seared into its side, encasing it in sheets of ice. Lapis followed it, and saw a pigeon flying into the cavern, calling out a series of notes that should've come from a machine instead.

Lapis took the opportunity, dumping four quick charged shots into the Bulk's side, chips of its frozen body flying off the points of impact. After a few moments, the ice shattered, and the Bulk started toward Lapis again.

"I get it, alright? This is a dream, and you're my doubt, or guilt or whatever. I read you loud and clear, and I'm going back home," Lapis said, and one last bullet flew from the barrel of his rifle, embedding itself into the Bulk's side. It stumbled and sank into a crouch, but instead of the ascending howl it should've released, Lapis only heard the Bulk laugh.

"At what cost?" it said, and then it exploded. The shockwave sent Lapis rolling across the floor, his whole world turning into a green-and-white blur as his stomach turned slower and slower circles. There were dozens of high screams as the Bulk's blast turned the rest of the swarm into paste, and for just a second, Lapis didn't get up.

When he rose, he found the crater was even bigger than he'd expected. And yet, the bodies of the other bugs in the swarm filled it completely. Their green-and-purple corpses glimmered in the fading light of the flares, and as Lapis looked, he realized why they were familiar. Spike's scales were exactly the same colors.

Too late, he heard the roller thundering closer from behind him, and turned to see its flaming black carapace filling his vision-

A thin, shining beam of blue-white light struck the roller from the side, and with a final squelch, it disintegrated, scraps of black iron falling to either side of Lapis in a clattering shower. The pigeon flew by again, then touched down in front of Lapis, looking up at him with deep, shining cyan eyes.

"Guilt," it murmured. Its voice was female, lightly accented, and so soft that Lapis almost didn't hear it. The pigeon cleared her throat, then looked at Lapis directly, suddenly speaking loudly enough that the ground beneath Lapis' hooves shook. "Unicorn, whence didst thou arrive in Ponyville?"

The corners of Lapis' mouth twitched upward, and suddenly, a laugh shuddered free of his throat, his back legs collapsing as he sat on his rump in the newly-peaceful cavern. "Okay. Sure. A Ye Olde Talking Pigeon. Why not?"

"We beg your pardon?" the pigeon asked, an affronted look crossing her face. Then, she looked down at her own feathery body. "Ah. We see. A simple misunderstanding, but our doing nonetheless. Allow us just a moment."

Then, suddenly, the pigeon dissolved into a cloud of twinkling indigo smoke, which curled around itself and slowly grew until it was taller than Lapis by about a third. Lapis frowned as a shape began to form within it - first legs, then a body, then a pair of wings and a long neck. Lapis watched as a long, narrow horn formed on its head, and his eyes snapped wide open in terrified realization as the last of the smoke curled into the alicorn's flowing, starry mane and tail.

"Are we now recognizable?" Princess Luna asked, staring down at Lapis with the same deep, bright-cyan eyes, Lapis' heart beginning to thunder in his chest as the world slowly went white. "We apologize for the confusion, thy dream was most- wait, please, thy panic is without need-!"

Lapis sat bolt upright in bed with a gasp, the blankets flying off his chest, sweat pouring down his face. His sheets were tangled like ropes around his legs, and his knees were still wobbly - whether from fear or phantom exertion, he was unsure.

"Shit," he said, his voice shaking. "Fuck."

Slowly, gingerly, he untangled himself, then climbed out of his bed and opened the window. It was a cloudy, windy morning in Ponyville - the chill of autumn was beginning to creep into the air, and between that, the humidity, and Lapis� recent dream, looking around gave Lapis the sort of cold, dark, clammy impression that would normally inspire him to remain under the covers for "just a little" longer than normal.

Unfortunately, that wasn't an option. Not today, and - if Princess Luna really had just stuck her nose inside his head - quite possibly never. I need to start sleep deprivation, pronto, until I come up with a plan. I need to find two bags of coffee, some protein powder, a live nettle, and bees. After that, it'll be a matter of willpower and - actually, no, this is a terrible idea.

Fuck. If my first thought was sleep deprivation, then clearly I need more sleep, not less.

Focus on today right now, come up with a better plan later. I wrecked Ponyville yesterday, and it's not going to fix itself.

The first thing that Lapis managed to repair was the hole in his floor that led into his basement, and the process calmed him down considerably. In the half an hour it took him to complete it, his knees had stopped shaking entirely, and he was about to make some breakfast and get moving when a knock came at his door.

Lapis peeked out the window, and was only a little surprised by the pony waiting on the other side. "Good morning, Ms. Mayor," he said, pulling the door open. "I'd ask what brings you here so early, but somehow..."

"Good morning, Lapis," Mayor Mare replied, walking over to Lapis' dining table and taking a seat. "And if your guess has something to do with yesterday's fiasco, then yes, you'd be right. You may want to sit down - I do have a game plan, but you're not going to like it."

"Seeing as it's my fault," Lapis began, but a sudden, enormous yawn cut him off mid-sentence. "Sorry. Long night, and I haven't had any coffee yet. Should I brew some up, or wait until you're done?"

"Oh, please, yes, coffee," Mayor Mare said, her eyes snapping wide open. "My Prench press cracked last weekend, and I haven't had a drop since."

Lapis chuckled, heading back into the kitchen. "Well, that sounds like a nightmare. You want any cream? Sugar?"

"A little of both," Mayor Mare said. "...Come to think of it, make that a lot of cream. The sooner it's cool enough to drink, the better."

"Agreed," Lapis said, already igniting the stove beneath the full teapot.

From back in the living room, Mayor Mare gasped. "Oh, I love that armoire! Where'd you get it?"

"Armoire?" Lapis asked, peeking back into the living room. He sighed as he spotted the armoire that Mayor Mare was talking about, a narrow construction of dark, faintly-reddish wood that sat up against the wall just beside the portrait of the mustached griffon. "...Yeah, that one's from my trip to Amberhoof. I wouldn't go there for furniture, though, most of what they've got is broken."

"If you say so," Mayor Mare said. "Was this difficult to find?"

"Nope," Lapis said, deliberately flicking his ears back upright as he reached for the bag of ground coffee beans. "Honestly, it just about found me."

A few minutes later, Lapis emerged from the kitchen, bearing two cups of coffee. Mayor Mare accepted hers with outstretched hooves, and wasted no time taking a long, deep draw from her mug as Lapis sat down. "Perfect," she muttered.

Lapis nodded, taking a more modest sip of his own coffee and doing his best to ignore the wardrobe in the room. "So, about that 'game plan' you mentioned?"

Mayor Mare nodded, closing her eyes and taking another drink of coffee. "...Yes. Well, Lapis, there's no easy way to say this, so I suppose I'd better just come out and say it."

She opened her eyes, fixing Lapis with a surprisingly convincing firm look. "I'll have to ask you not to charge for repairing any of the damage you've caused."

Lapis paused, his the gears slowly rumbling to life in his head as he tried to figure out how many bits he was about to lose from his debt-repayment fund. The number that he came up with was uncomfortably large, but then again, so was the amount of harm he'd done to Ponyville. "...Honestly, I was already planning to offer a massive discount and cover any replacement parts out-of-pocket, so that's just about what I was expecting. Is there anything you'd prefer that I fixed first?"

Mayor Mare paused, cocking her head. "...You're taking this a lot better than I thought you might."

"It's my fault," Lapis said, shrugging. "That means it's my responsibility to fix it, whether I get paid to or not."

"I'm sorry, but don't you get paid to clean up after what everypony else breaks?" Mayor Mare asked, frowning.

"...Well, not everypony can fix things with their own hooves or horn," Lapis said, setting down his cup of coffee. "But anypony who has bits has the ability to spend them, and throwing money at your problems is a pretty reliable fix. I'm just a step in the process."

Mayor Mare took a slow sip of her coffee. "That's certainly one way of looking at it."

"Well, to be fair, I only look at it that way for the first two minutes of a job," Lapis said, and Mayor Mare snorted into her coffee. "Anyway, yeah, is there anything you want me to prioritize?"

Mayor Mare thought for a few moments, then sighed. "Well, one Mrs. Spoiled Rich has been sending me some very strongly worded letters about her damaged siding since yesterday evening, and as much as I hate to encourage her, I'd be very grateful if you got her off my back."

"...Spoiled Rich?" Lapis asked, his eyes going wide. "Actual name?"

"By marriage, yes," Mayor Mare said. "As I recall, before she married Mr. Filthy Rich, she went by 'Spoiled Milk' instead. Frankly, both names suit her."

"Wow," Lapis muttered. "Also, ouch for her. ...Wait. Hang on." Lapis took a quick draw of his coffee, his eyes narrowing in thought, then spoke. "Wowch."

Mayor Mare blinked, then chuckled, resting her forehead on one of her hooves. "Oh, goodness," she sighed. "...Oh. Lapis, there's one more thing that I perhaps ought to ask."

She cleared her throat, then looked at him directly. "Is it true that you almost had another Harmonic Cascade?"

Lapis paused, then slowly set his coffee down. "That's... yeah, it's true. Though, Lyra saved the day this time, so at least I'll be able to clean up my own mess."

"I see," Mayor Mare said, sighing and pushing her glasses up her muzzle with a hoof. "So, I suppose that means you still aren't feeling secure, in Ponyv-"

Lapis held up a hoof. "Please, just... stop, alright? I get it, you're trying to look out for Ponyville, and I appreciate that - both as the pony in charge of fixing it, and also as somepony who lives here. What happened yesterday was... I've got a lot to worry about, a lot more than one conversation can fix. I'm working on it, and thanks to Lyra, I think I've got some ideas for later. For today, can we please just stick to fixing Ponyville?"

Mayor Mare shook her head. "That includes you, Lapis. You�re part of Ponyville too-"

"No," Lapis cut her off, "I'm not. I'll live here, I'll work here, but when I'm done, I will go back home."

For a few seconds, neither of them spoke. Then, slowly, Lapis took a deep breath. "...Sorry. That came out harsher than I meant it to. It's been a long night."

Mayor Mare didn't reply for a second or two, simply sitting back in the chair. "Your home," she eventually said. "If... if it's not too much, Lapis, who or what is waiting for you there?"

"...Debt," Lapis said. "A couple different kinds. I owe a lot to my family, and I owe some other folks... more than what my family has. That's the big problem, that's what I'm working on, is there anything else you needed?"

Mayor Mare shook her head, then gingerly sipped her coffee. "No, that's all. I'm sorry, Lapis. And thank you for sharing."

Lapis nodded, but couldn't think of any reply, so instead he simply raised his mug to his lips.

Mayor Mare finished her coffee and left not long afterward, and before too long, Lapis had made and eaten some breakfast. He was just beginning to flip through the tall stack of request slips that had been tacked to his door when another knock came at his door.

Twice in one morning? Lapis thought. Guess today's gonna be one of those days. "On my way," he called, peeking through the window.

"Howdy, Lapis," Big Mac said, as he cracked open the door. "Ah was hopin' y'all hadn't left yet."

"Hey, Big Mac," Lapis replied, pausing and cocking an eyebrow as he set the stack of request slips on the table. "And hey to you too, Apple Bloom."

"...Hello," Apple Bloom said, after she looked up from the space where the hole in Lapis' floor had been.

Big Mac stepped inside, gently nudging Apple Bloom ahead of himself. "So, how busy are y'all today?"

"Pretty busy," Lapis said, patting the stack of slips on his table with a hoof. "The requests from yesterday are coming in fast, and since I'm the reason they exist, I'm taking care of them on the house. Why, what's up?"

Big Mac nodded. "Well, if that's what you're up to, then Ah've got a helper for you, if you'll allow it."

"A helper?" Lapis asked, cocking an eyebrow - and then there was a crunching crash from the middle of the room. Lapis winced, then looked over at the stool beside the table.

The stool had fallen over, one of its legs splintered in two, and Apple Bloom had fallen on top of it - Lapis realized she must've tried to climb on top of it, and had pushed it over instead, breaking one of the legs as she landed.

"...Sorry," Apple Bloom said, her bow rustling as her ears flopped back.

"Five-second fix," Lapis said, waving a hoof. "I'll patch it up when I get back. Speaking of which, Big Mac, you mind following me outside real quick? There's something I might need help straightening out."

"Don't mind a bit," Big Mac said, following Lapis out the door.

As soon as they were on the porch, Lapis closed the door and turned to face Big Mac. "Alright, can we talk this through for a second?"

"E-yup."

"You're trying to teach Apple Bloom a lesson here, aren't you?"

"E-yup."

"Okay. Cool. So why are you passing her to me?"

Big Mac shrugged. "Y'all're the pony she's causin' the most trouble for. The way Ah see it, havin' to find out how much work goes into cleanin' up might make her think twice before she makes another mess."

Lapis grimaced. "Alright, I can see why you'd think that, but there's a couple issues. First off, there really won't be much for her to do - about the only way I can think of to keep her busy will be to make her a gopher."

"Gopher?" Big Mac asked, cocking an eyebrow.

"Go for this hammer, go for that screwdriver," Lapis said, waving a hoof. Probably a dialect thing. "Anyway, that'll only last so long before she gets the idea to bring me the whole toolbox, and then she's just going to follow me around being bored for the rest of the day."

"E-yup," Big Mac confirmed. "That's the idea. Alright, Lapis, Ah know it's a lot to ask, and a lot more to drop on somepony with no prior warnin'. But she could've been hurt bad, and between the two of us, somethin' tells me y'all might have a better idea of how bad than Ah do."

Lapis winced, and for a moment or two he could hear the rattling rumble of the mana compressor bearing down on Spike.

"Ah want to make sure it doesn't happen again," Big Mac continued, looking Lapis right in the face. "Or try to, anyhow. Can Ah ask you to help with that?"

"...You got me there," Lapis said. "Alright, it's a deal. Just... if there is a next time, please warn me in advance."

"E-yup," Big Mac agreed. "Ah can do that. Alright, Ah guess we'd better head back inside, soon as Apple Bloom gets her ear off the door."

...Gets her ear off the door? Lapis cocked an eyebrow, then his eyes widened in surprise as the door to his workshop rattled in its frame. "Oh. Well, I think we're in the clear now."

“…So let me get this straight,” Twilight said, rubbing her forehead with a hoof as she stood in the center of the library. “It took you all day to reshelve one shelf?”

Spike laughed nervously, scratching the back of his head. “…Well, I did have to do it twice.”

“I’m sure,” Twilight said, cocking an eyebrow as she ignited her horn. “And I’m sure the bowl full of sapphires in the fridge had nothing to do with it?”

“…Nope,” Spike said.

“So, if I get that bowl out of the fridge,” Twilight began, her sentence punctuated by the dull thunk of the fridge closing. “The whole thing will still be full of sparkling, tasty sapphires?”

“Well, maybe not full,” Spike said, as a large and completely empty ceramic bowl floated around the corner behind Twilight. “And again, I really did have to do it twice, so I wound up going to sleep before I could dust off the last few shelves.”

“Uh-huh,” Twilight said, setting the empty bowl down on the library desk, then turning to get behind the counter. “That was supposed to be a week’s worth of sapphires, Spike. I ordered them specifically from Canterlot, and they disappeared in one day.”

Spike groaned. “I know, I know, I’m sorry!” He sighed, turning to stare into the distance.

“They were just… so good,” he mumbled, a dreamy expression floating across his face.

Twilight rolled her eyes, grinning, then turned to stare out the window. …Huh. Well, those are some dense clouds. I thought today was scheduled for clear skies.

“So, why did you have to reshelve twice, anyway?” Twilight asked, as she started rifling through the space behind the counter for the weather schedule.

“Huh?” Spike asked. “Oh, yeah. So, there was this whole thing with a giant metal wheel… thing.”

“A giant metal wheel,” Twilight repeated, flicking through one of the drawers of a filing cabinet.

“Uh-huh, and somepony must’ve set it on fire or something, because it was definitely on fire,” Spike continued.

“Really.” Twilight pulled a waxed sheet of paper free from the drawer, checked the date, and frowned. Thought so. Maybe something’s up at the weather factory… Where’s Rainbow Dash, anyway? She probably knows what’s going on.

“Yeah, I stepped out of the library and it was rolling right for me,” Spike said, stepping onto Twilight’s side of the counter and hopping onto a small stool nearby. “Then, the next thing I know, some unicorn tosses me out of the way, right into the bookshelf, apologizes, then runs off with Big Mac!”

“…Big Mac?” Twilight asked, cocking her head. “Wait, Spike. That unicorn… what did he look like?”

“Huh?” Spike frowned. “Uh, he had kind of a white coat, with a blue mane and tail. And… I think his Cutie Mark was some kind of rock thing?”

Twilight looked over, her eyes widening. Wait, he isn't making up an excuse?! “You’re absolutely sure?”

“Pretty sure, yeah,” Spike said, scratching the side of his head with a claw. “Anyway, after that, I put all the books back up, and then I just kinda… grabbed a book and checked out for the night, I guess. That’s where the sapphires went.”

“Oh,” Twilight said, slipping the sheet of paper back into the drawer and sliding it shut. “Well, I’m sorry, Spike. I honestly had no idea you were in any danger!”

Spike waved a dismissive hand. “Well, yeah, but those were still a lot of sapphires.” His eyes glazed over again. “Mmm… sapphires.”

“I mean it, Spike,” Twilight said, walking over and wrapping him in a hug. “Don’t get into any more danger, alright? And if you do, then… well, consider it more important than snacks!”

“Okay, okay!” Spike grumbled, turning his head away. “Yeesh, you don’t need to get all mushy about it!”

Twilight grinned, briefly tightening her hug around Spike, then let him go. “I’ve got to go find Rainbow Dash for something. Don’t go stepping in front of any more metal wheels, alright?”

“You’ve got it!” Spike said, snapping to attention. “Nopony’s getting into this library without me knowing about it, no ma’am!”

Twilight rolled her eyes, grabbing a pair of saddlebags and draping them over her back. “See you, Spike!”

“See you!” Spike called, as Twilight walked down the library steps and toward the center of Ponyville.

As soon as she heard the door swing shut, however, Twilight picked up her pace, heading toward Town Hall at a trot and scanning the cloudy skies with a firm glare. She still meant to find Rainbow Dash, alright, but at this point, finding out what was wrong with the weather was just a sideshow.

Spike had been in danger, and Twilight strongly suspected that Lapis Print had something to do with it. And if she was right…

Well, then Twilight wanted to make sure he wouldn’t get away this time. And while sidestepping her magic and hiding from Pinkie Pie was one thing, outrunning the fastest flyer in Equestria on hoof was another matter entirely.

“So, uh, what-all do you get up to in your spare time, mister?”

Lapis was halfway toward the Rich family home, and he’d decided to take care of any jobs that were on the way. Presently, that meant he was lying on his back, trying to stick the leg back onto a table - the problem was, the splintered end of the leg had wound up buried in the dirt, and now Lapis wanted to get as much of the dirt out as he could before he tried to fix the table. “Uh, usually I go check up on my friends, or go tinker in the basement. Pass me the screwdriver?”

“Hold on.” There was a second or two of scuffling, and then Apple Bloom’s head popped into Lapis’ field of view, his screwdriver held in her mouth. Lapis took it, then started using the screwdriver as a pick to dig out the more stubborn patches of dried mud.

“Uh, yeah,” Apple Bloom said. “They’d be… Bon Bon the candymaker, right? And Lyra the musician?”

Well, this is awkward. “Yep,” Lapis said, wincing as the screwdriver slid right over the top of a narrower patch of dirt. “Hey, I need one nail, they’re in the little pouch on the outside of the left saddlebag.”

“Ah’m on it!” Apple Bloom disappeared from view, and Lapis took a second just to lie on the ground, staring up at the small crust of dirt that remained. Either Apple Bloom didn’t realize that this was a punishment or she was trying to work around it, because she hadn’t stopped trying to make small talk since the two of them had left Lapis’ workshop. At first, it’d just been about his work, but she’d already tried to steer it toward the equipment in his basement twice before - then suddenly veered away from the topic at the last second. Lapis' guess was that she was trying to pick his brain about artifice, while dodging the lecture about messing with magical power tools.

“Here you are,” Apple Bloom said, her voice distorted by the nail pinched in the corner of her mouth. “So, how did y’all meet each other, anyway?”

“Accidentally,” Lapis said, levitating the nail over and setting to work. “Bon Bon was carrying a big bowl of suckers to somepony’s office, and I wasn’t looking where I was going. I ran into her, the bowl fell off her back, it broke, lollipops went everywhere…”

Lapis scraped the last few grains of dirt free from the table, then slowly began lifting the rest of the leg back into place. “Anyway, I fixed the bowl and helped her clean up the mess, and then we were both on our way. That happened, uh, a couple more times, and eventually…” Lapis grunted as he crawled out from beneath the table, getting ready to actually fix the thing. “…Eventually, she asked me what I was doing. We got to talking after that, and the next thing I knew, I’d been invited to breakfast.”

Lapis jammed the table leg fully into place, ignoring the familiar flash of heat from his Cutie Mark and shutting his eyes as light flashed from the cracks of the table. When he opened his eyes, the table was good as new. “Perfect. Okay, let’s get-”

“WHOA!” Apple Bloom shouted, loudly enough that Lapis felt his ears flatten themselves against the back of his head. “Lapis, mister, your Cutie Mark - it glowed!”

“Alright, calm down!” Lapis said, waving a frantic hoof. “Yeah, it does that. As far as I can tell, it nets me a discount for all the Mend-All spells I keep casting. Not a big deal, you don’t need to yell about it. Let’s get to the next job, alright?”

Lapis slung the saddlebags back over his shoulder, hoping Apple Bloom would drop the subject and follow after him. She did, but it seemed she couldn’t remain silent for long. “So, uh, all that magical tinkerin’ you do in your workshop… that ain’t your special talent?”

Well, here we are again… I really don’t want to risk taking my emotions out on her, but someone’s got to have this talk with her. “No, it’s not, it’s just something I learned how to do,” Lapis said. “But, now that we’re talking about my basement, there’s a couple of things I wanted to go over with you.”

Apple Bloom quietly groaned, but Lapis pushed on. “So, pop quiz: what’s the weight of one cubic foot of pure metallic iron?”

“Uh… Ah can’t say Ah know,” Apple Bloom said.

“That’s okay, this isn’t a graded quiz,” Lapis said. “The answer is four hundred and ninety-one pounds. …And a half, if you really want to get picky, but that doesn’t matter. Now, around how many cubic feet of iron do you think went into the mana compressor that was rolling around Ponyville yesterday?”

“Oh,” Apple Bloom said, her ears flopping back. “Uh… two?”

“That’s pretty close,” Lapis said. “It was about two and a half cubic feet. That, times four hundred and ninety one pounds, equals roughly one thousand two hundred pounds total. That’s a little over half a ton of iron. Now: do you know what happens when half a ton of iron comes down on top of somepony?”

Apple Bloom remained silent, her eyes going wide.

“There’s a lot of things that could’ve happened,” Lapis said, stopping to meet her gaze. “To you, to your friends, or to anypony in Ponyville. You can sum up most of those things as crunch. Do you know Spike?”

“Uh, yeah,” Apple Bloom said, glancing to the side, and Lapis internally perked to attention. Alright, time to see if she gets how badly things could’ve gone wrong. If she doesn’t, then I’ve got an excuse to keep her far away - and if she does, then I can wrap up this whole thing and be done.

When next Lapis spoke, he tried to be as mindful of his tone and face as possible, keeping it as clear of anger and judgment as he knew how to do. “Well, crunch almost happened to him.”

At once, Apple Bloom went pale, and her eyes grew wide with horror. Oh, okay, well, she gets it, but that was way too much to drop on her. I need to run damage control, fast.

“He’s alright, and the fact that he was in danger was my fault, not yours,” Lapis added. “I’m the one who made that mana compressor, and I’m the one who had the bright idea of making it run off any bit of mana that went near it. So don’t worry about it too much - just know that it could’ve happened, and… y’know, maybe don’t go poking around any more workshops, alright?”

“Okay,” Apple Bloom said, nodding. She was still a little wide-eyed and pale, but she no longer looked like she was about to throw up, so Lapis decided he could let the matter drop.

“Alright, good,” he said. “Now, let’s get to this next job. Two more stops before the Rich family home, and that’ll probably be the hard part.”

Apple Bloom cocked her head. “...Wait, hold on. You, uh, didn’t say we were goin’ to Filthy Rich’s mansion, didja?”

“Well, I didn’t know it was a mansion,” Lapis said. “But yeah, that’s where we’re going.”

Apple Bloom swallowed, and Lapis frowned. “Why, is there something I should know about the Rich family?”

“Uh, nothin’ in particular,” Apple Bloom said, hurriedly trotting ahead of Lapis. “C’mon, these jobs ain’t gonna do themselves!”

Uh-oh, Lapis thought.

“Rainbow Dash!” Twilight called, from the ground below Rainbow’s cloud house. “Hello? Anypony home? Rainbow Dash!”

No response came, and Twilight groaned, putting her hoof to her forehead, then turned her gaze upward and walked away, scanning the hazy gray clouds for any sign of a sky-blue pegasus. Honestly, why is that pony never where she’s supposed to-

“Uh, Twilight? I’m right here.”

“What?” Twilight glanced around, checking the skies above her head - then, when she eventually looked around at level ground, she found Rainbow Dash standing right behind her. “Oh! I thought you’d be flying.”

Rainbow Dash shrugged, grinning. “What, like my wings are the the only things I exercise? Gotta put my hooves through their paces, too - I couldn’t have broken the sound barrier without them!”

“You sure your wings aren’t just tired from yesterday?” Twilight asked, cocking an eyebrow.

Rainbow’s eyes widened for a fraction of a second, then she closed them and waved dismissively, spreading her wings to hover a foot or two off the ground. “These babies, tired? Come on, Twilight! If I wanted to, I could pull off another Sonic Rainboom right now! I just…” Rainbow touched down again, folding her wings at her sides. “…thought I could balance out my day-to-day activity, yeah!”

“O-kay,” Twilight said. “And that has nothing to do with the weather today?”

Rainbow looked up at the cloudy sky and grimaced. “Nah, that ugly mess blew outta the Everfree last night. The cleanup crew from Cloudsdale should be on their way to take care of it before too long.”

“Cleanup crew?” Twilight asked.

“Yeah, there aren’t a lot of pegasi who’ll shove around clouds that move on their own,” Rainbow said. “The weather factory’s got a dedicated cleanup crew, but they sure don’t work for cheap. So, you come all the way over here just to bug me about the weather?”

“I wish,” Twilight muttered, turning to face Rainbow Dash head-on. “No, I need your help finding somepony.”

Rainbow cocked her head. “Huh? Uh, Twilight, isn’t that more like a Rarity problem? She’s the pony who loves detective books, not me.”

“Well, I already know who I’m trying to find,” Twilight said. “The problem is catching him.”

“Whoa, hang on,” Rainbow said, waving a hoof and grinning. “Catching him? Twilight, this is Ponyville. It’s not like this pony’s going to run away as soon as he spots you.”

Twilight fixed Rainbow with a flat, fatigued stare, and the grin slowly vanished from Rainbow’s face.

“Wait,” Rainbow said, cocking her head. “Really?”

“Really,” Twilight said. “He’s gotten away from me once, and from Pinkie Pie a few times.”

Rainbow’s jaw dropped. “From Pinkie?! No way. Nopony gets away from Pinkie.”

“Apparently, nopony except Lapis Print,” Twilight said, turning toward the center of Ponyville. “And on top of that, I think he was involved with something that nearly got Spike hurt yesterday. Follow me, I’ll explain on the way.”

They arrived at Lapis’ workshop a few minutes later, and Twilight and Rainbow Dash stopped right at his front door.

“Hey!” Rainbow shouted. “Repair-pony! You in here? Open up, we’ve got some questions!”

“Hold on, Rainbow Dash,” Twilight said, levitating a sheet of paper off the notice board. “…According to this, he’s probably not here right now, and… he made the wheel?!”

“What?” Rainbow said, looking over Twilight’s shoulder.

“According to this, it looks like he was doing some experiments with artifice, and one of them got loose,” Twilight said, narrowing her eyes as she read. “…And he’s fixing everything that his experiment broke for free. Well, at least he has a conscience, even if his lab safety is substandard.”

“So, he’s out in Ponyville somewhere?” Rainbow said, turning to look at Twilight. “What’s he look like?”

“Huh? Um, he’s a unicorn, and he has a white coat with a blue mane-”

“Yeah, yeah, that’s plenty. Stay put for a sec.”

“Rainbow-” Twilight began, but she was gone before Twilight had finished, a lingering rainbow trail the only sign she’d been on the ground a few moments before. Twilight looked up, and saw Rainbow hovering in the air about a hundred hooves off the ground, shielding her eyes with a hoof as she looked downward, her gaze sweeping up and down the streets of Ponyville. Her eyes narrowed as a scowl spread across her face, and a few seconds later she’d swooped down to land beside Twilight.

“No sign of him,” Rainbow muttered. “You sure he lives in Ponyville?”

“Positive,” Twilight said. “I know for a fact he was talking with Big Mac a week ago- wait, Rainbow, what are you doing?!”

Rainbow Dash pushed her hoof against Lapis’ front door, and it swung open. “Look, if this ‘Lapis’ guy lives in Ponyville, and I couldn’t spot him from up there, that means he’s gotta be inside somepony’s house, right? The way I figure, looking around his own house for him is the best way to start.” Then, as Twilight gaped, Rainbow pushed the door open and stepped inside Lapis Print’s workshop.

“…Rainbow Dash, you can’t just go breaking into ponies’ houses!” Twilight said, stepping inside after her and pulling a curtain closed before the windows. “What would ponies think if they saw us?!”

“Uh, that we’re looking for the repair-pony?” Rainbow said, hovering just behind the counter. “Besides, Twilight, this guy almost hurt Spike. Are you really gonna feel bad about poking around his stuff? Now c’mon, help me look for anything suspicious.”

Twilight groaned, then stepped around to peer beneath the bar. “Rainbow, this is an accounting desk. We won’t find anything here but standard office supplies.”

“Well, yeah, duh,” Rainbow Dash huffed. “But look, there’s notes and stuff! You read fast, do any of them look like he’s up to no good?”

Twilight cocked an eyebrow, then levitated a note up to her face and read it aloud. “‘Buy 3 more crates of request slips before winter.’ Dastardly.”

As Rainbow rolled her eyes and peeked inside the closet behind the counter, Twilight sighed, then took a better look around the repair-pony’s front room. It looked like Lapis had outfitted it as a combination living room and workspace, setting up a table and a set of cushions by the large, now-obscured window. Beside a doorway that probably led into the rest of the house, a large wardrobe made from dark wood stood propped up against the wall beside a portrait of… wait, is that Baron Gentry von Hoofber? Hm. Not the griffon noble I would’ve hung on my wall, but it’s not a bad likeness.

“Anything besides tools back there, Rainbow?” Twilight asked, as Rainbow pulled her head back out of the closet.

“Nah, just some empty boxes,” Rainbow said, looking around the room. She frowned at once, staring up at the top of the armoire. “Hey, is it just me, or is that a pigeon in the living room?”

“Pigeon?” Twilight asked, cocking her head, then looking up at the top of the wardrobe. Sure enough, perched atop the highest point of the reddish wood was a perfectly ordinary pigeon, staring down at Rainbow Dash and Twilight with beady, narrowed eyes. “Huh. Well, how’d you get inside?”

The pigeon’s eyes narrowed further, but it didn’t move from the top of the wardrobe, apparently content to glare down at Rainbow and Twilight as they kept looking around the house.

To her own surprise, Twilight was the first one through the open doorway, which turned out to lead into the kitchen, and then down a darkened hallway with three doors. The first revealed a bathroom, which Twilight didn’t bother investigating.

The second room was… a bedroom, but a near-perfectly clean one. The blankets were taut on the mattress, the nightstands were only barely dusty, and the chest of drawers looked as if it had never been used. Twilight felt her apprehension increasing as she stepped into the room and looked around, wondering how many laws she was breaking even as she wondered whether there might be any information inside of the dresser.

Neither, Twilight decided, was worth finding out. “Rainbow Dash, we really shouldn’t be in here,” she said, stepping out of the empty bedroom.

“Hang on, Twilight,” Rainbow Dash said, stepping out of the room at the end of the hall. “I found his bedroom, but I still don’t see any kind of blacksmithing doohickeys. Where d’you think he made the- huh?”

The flapping of small wings echoed down the hallway, followed by the soft click of a lightswitch. Then, the magical lanterns that had been lighting the hall flickered and faded, plunging Twilight and Rainbow Dash into darkness.

Twilight was just about to light up her horn when something fluffy and heavy collided with the side of her head, throwing off her focus and knocking her to the ground. “Ow! Rainbow, was that you?”

“Uh, I think so?” Rainbow replied. Twilight winced - Rainbow Dash was speaking directly into her ear, from what sounded like only a few inches away. “What happened? Why’s it so dark all of a sudden?”

“I don’t know,” Twilight said, carefully getting to her hooves. “But I think maybe that bird turned off the lights.”

Rainbow grunted, and Twilight winced as Rainbow’s wing smacked into her face, throwing off her concentration again. “I knew that pigeon was looking at me funny! Ugh… where’s the light switch?”

“Well, if you give me a second- ow!” Twilight yelped, as Rainbow hit her in the face for the third time, this time with a blindly groping hoof. She staggered a few steps down the hall, holding a protective hoof in front of her horn as Rainbow Dash pushed her further on.

A dull, hollow thunk echoed through the hallway, and Rainbow Dash grunted again. “Ow… hey, wait a second. There wasn’t a door here, was there?”

“A door where? -Gah!” Twilight said, stumbling backward as she walked into a hard, vertical wooden surface. Instead of finding empty space behind her, however, Twilight backed up into Rainbow Dash, and then into another wood wall, just as solid and hard as the one she’d walked into.

“Watch where you’re going, Twilight. There’s a door or something right here,” Rainbow Dash said from beside her. “Y’know, in the doorway we came through? The kitchen floor oughta be right over here-”

Rainbow Dash’s hoof made a solid, quiet thunk as it collided with another wooden wall, this one directly adjacent to Twilight’s head. For a few seconds, it was quiet.

“Uh, Twilight?” Rainbow Dash asked. “Is it just me, or is the hallway shrinking?”

“What?” Twilight asked, putting her front hooves out to the sides - and to her confusion, she found that wherever she and Rainbow Dash were, it was a much tighter space than the hallway had been. “Huh. Well, that’s strange.”

“Oh, yeah,” Rainbow said, an undertone of tension in her voice, Twilight wincing as something fluffy smacked into her side. “Definitely pretty weird, right? I can barely - spread my wings in here.”

“That’s because you’re trying to spread your wing through me, Rainbow,” Twilight said, feeling her ears flop back atop her head. “Hang on, let me see if I can just… there!”

Finally, Twilight managed to cast a Hornlight spell without being interrupted, and a cool amethyst glow poured out of her horn, revealing that the side of her head was almost pressed directly against the side of Rainbow Dash’s. They were standing side-by-side in a tiny room, only barely big enough for the both of them to fit in, made from some kind of dark wood. There weren’t any light fixtures, and the only crack in the walls was right next to Twilight’s head.

“Whoa,” Rainbow Dash muttered, her voice wobbling slightly. “Uh, this is way too tight. Twilight, tell me you’ve got a way outta here?”

“Give me a second,” Twilight said again, looking through the crack. “Wherever we are, I can see the living room and the counter. But that doesn’t make any sense, the only things that were over here were… oh, I get it.”

“Get what?” Rainbow Dash asked.

Twilight raised a hoof to the crack, pushing gently - and the wood to either side swung outward with a faint creak. The double doors opened, revealing the rest of Lapis’ front room as Twilight stepped through them and out of the wardrobe.

“Oh,” Rainbow Dash said, and she quickly followed Twilight back into the dimly-lit room. “…I knew that.”

“Uh-huh,” Twilight said, frowning over at the wardrobe. How did we even get in there?! “Now are you ready to leave?”

Rainbow Dash cleared her throat. “…Yeah, I don’t think he’s in here. Just that pigeon… hey, where’d that pigeon go?!” she added, taking to the air and glaring around the room.

Twilight looked around the room, then sighed and headed for the door. “Come on, Rainbow. We need to look around the rest of Ponyville-”

“Right, yeah. On it,” Rainbow said, and she was ahead of Twilight and out the door in a rainbow-colored blur.

“-And if that doesn’t work…” Twilight trailed off, as Rainbow disappeared into the sky. Wow, she really got out of here fast. Maybe that wardrobe thing spooked her more than I thought.

Twilight looked over at the wardrobe again, then shook her head and started down the road, briefly looking Lapis’ request board as she trotted toward Cantering Boulevard. The only repair-pony in Ponyville… I don’t even want to imagine what his schedule might look like. Honestly, it’s no wonder I can’t seem to catch him at his shop…

…So how does he manage to hang out with Big Mac?

Twilight frowned, and added a new item to the bottom of her mental checklist. If Rainbow can’t find Lapis, then we go talk to Big Mac.

“…Mister Print!” Apple Bloom panted, from a few steps behind Lapis. “Won’tcha slow down fer a second or two?”

“What? Oh, sorry,” Lapis said, slowing his pace - and then immediately stepping to the side, to avoid colliding with a stallion he’d accidentally cut off. Right. Kids have shorter legs. I need to watch my walking pace.

Apple Bloom caught up a second or two later. “Sorry for hollerin’, but Ah swear, y’all just disappear when you get too far ahead!”

“…Disappear?” Lapis said, frowning over at Apple Bloom. “What, like I turn invisible? Like magic?”

“No, Ah mean one second Ah can see you fine, and then the next second you’ve bobbed and wove through so many ponies, Ah’ve no idea which way you’ve gone!” Apple Bloom said, frowning and tucking back her ears.

Oh. Well, shit, I guess that’s another leftover Pinkie habit. “Sorry,” Lapis said, briefly shuffling through his order slips. “…If it makes you feel any better, we should be done with the street pretty soon. If this address is right, then I think the Rich family manor is right around the corner.”

“…Oh,” Apple Bloom muttered. “Great.”

Lapis frowned again, then looked up at the house in front of them. As mansions went… well, it wasn’t what Lapis had been expecting.

Most of the houses in Ponyville were stereotypical-medieval wattle and daub cottages with thatch roofs, and most of the exceptions were some variety of tree. Even among the standouts, though, the Rich family home stood out. For one thing, it had actual shingles - the clay variety, but painted to a dull black that matched the broad, gleaming shutters. The manor had decorative white planks for siding, the pristine boards set at just the right angle to provide texture to the walls without looking jagged. The windows, instead of being in the Ponyville-typical variety of curved or rounded shapes, were all perfect rectangles, and the door was a single solid item of vivid, yet unoffensive maroon. The property even had a white picket-fence.

All in all, looking at the property gave Lapis the distinct impression that a house-sized pocket of upper-class suburb had somehow followed him from America, and that knocking on the door would summon a woman with bleached-blond hair, sparkling high heels, and a pristine and entirely false smile. Unfortunately, Lapis was required to knock anyway.

To Lapis’ surprise, the pony who opened the door was the stallion of the house - an older, beige-olive Earth-pony with icy blue eyes and a jet-black mane, which he wore slicked back. He wore a navy suit lapel with a white shirt collar, atop which was a maroon tie that matched the door. Embroidered on his tie was a golden dollar sign, and even his Cutie Mark was a trio of bulging sacks, each marked with the symbol of wealth.

“Mr. Filthy Rich?” Lapis asked.

The stallion smiled a vaguely weary smile. “I prefer Rich. And you’d be the repair-pony?”

“Yep, that’s me. Lapis Print, here to get your siding back in order,” Lapis said. “Just wanted to make sure before I get started, is there anything I should know about the spot in question?”

Filthy Rich shrugged. “Besides that there’s a chunk taken out of the wall, not really.”

“Got it,” Lapis said, putting on his best customer-service grin. “Just wanted to make sure, in case there’s some paint I should get from the shed, or an extra-special flowerpot I need to not trip over.”

Filthy Rich nodded, considering. “Oh, of course. Well, there is the hydrangea over there, but it’s tough. Don’t uproot it, and it should recover. And for the shed, I think there might be a can of paint in there, but I can’t promise anything about brushes…” Filthy Rich trailed off, looking over Lapis’ shoulder. “Sorry, but is this little filly with you?”

“This is Apple Bloom. She helped make the mess, so she gets to help clean it up,” Lapis said, gesturing to the wide-eyed filly. “She’s been with me all day, and she’s done good work so far. Don’t worry, Mr. Rich, I’ll keep an eye on her.”

Filthy Rich chuckled. “Responsibility, I like it. Alright, let me show you your work, and then I’ll get out of your way.”

Lapis relaxed as soon as he saw the siding. Truth be told, he’d been expecting far worse - the board definitely had a chunk missing, but all the pieces were right next to the wall. Even the paint hadn’t worn off yet.

“So, how bad?” Filthy Rich asked.

“Ten minutes,” Lapis said, carefully levitating all the pieces off the ground.

“Ten minutes?” Mr. Rich cocked an eyebrow. “You must be on good terms with the lumberyard.”

“Probably not,” Lapis said. He pressed two of the splinters together, and they melded in a flash. “I think I cost them half their work.”

Mr. Rich regarded Lapis’ work with surprise, then he laughed. “Oh, easily! Alright, I’ve got taxes to work on, so I’ll get out of your way. Come knock on the door when you’re ready to sort out the bill.”

He departed, and Lapis was left alone with Apple Bloom.

“…So, uh,” Apple Bloom began. “Is there anything Ah can do?”

“Not right now,” Lapis said, putting another pair of splinters together. “I mean, unless you want to dig through this mulch for any spare chunks of Mr. Rich’s house?”

“Oh. Uh, no, Ah think you’ve got them all,” Apple Bloom said, scuffing her hoof against the grass. “But, uh, there aren’t any tools Ah ought to go get?”

“My saddlebags are right…” Lapis began, but then he realized that they weren’t on his back. He paused, looking around, his eyes passing over Apple Bloom just as she nudged something brown and distinctly bag-shaped around the corner of the building with her hoof. Lapis cocked an eyebrow at Apple Bloom, who realized he was looking and quickly copped an innocent smile.

Lapis paused, then snorted, resting his forehead on a hoof as he chuckled. “God, you’re just like-” He cut himself off, then shook his head. “Never mind. You know what, sure, go get my saddlebags. Take your time, I probably don’t need anything out of there. Just don’t wander too far, we’ve still got work to do after this house.”

“Thank-yuh-mister-be-right-back!” Apple Bloom said, and she was around the corner in a blur of cream-and-red fur. Lapis shook his head again, then resumed putting the siding back together.

Luna, he thought. How am I going to deal with her… Sleep deprivation isn’t the answer, so maybe dream deprivation? I know NyQuil stops people from dreaming, but even if NyQuil is a thing here, there’s gotta be an option besides drugs. Maybe tea, or-

“Excuse me, sir?”

‘Sir?’ Lapis looked over to see another little filly standing beside him, neither Apple Bloom nor one of her friends. She was an Earth-pony, and she had a pale-pink coat and a lavender mane with white streaks. Perched atop her head was a silver tiara - an actual tiara, diamonds studding its peaks.

“Hi,” she said, and something in her voice made Lapis instinctively wonder where his manager was. “Um, sorry to bother you, but do you know where Apple Bloom is?”

“Can’t say I do,” Lapis said, frowning. “Friend of yours?”

The new filly cocked an eyebrow, and her mouth twisted unpleasantly before curling into a smile. “Um, yes! We’re very close. I thought I heard somepony say she was here, and I was just wondering if we could catch up.”

Yeah, bullshit. “What’s she look like?”

“Oh,” said the new filly, confusion briefly flashing across her face. “Well, she’s hard to miss…” She leaned in, and Lapis frowned. “She still doesn’t have her Cutie Mark.”

Oh, it’s you. Well, that explains a lot. “Okay, and?”

Diamond Tiara - how did I miss that, she’s literally wearing her name on her head - scoffed. “Excuse me?”

“I mean, that’s a pretty big category,” Lapis said. “You’re gonna have to get more specific. Are we talking an Earth-pony, a pegasus, or a unicorn? Tall, short? Interests, hobbies, what?”

“I-” Diamond Tiara paused, and Lapis was surprised to see a look of genuine confusion crossing her face. “…She’s an Earth-pony, I think, and she’s always wearing a red bow?”

“You think she’s an Earth-pony? That’s a big thing to forget,” Lapis said, turning back to his work. “I’d pay better attention to your friends, if I were you.”

Diamond Tiara huffed, and to Lapis’ amusement, she actually stamped a hoof. “Why aren’t you helping me! She isn’t that hard to pick out - She’s a pony my age, and she’s still a Blank Flank!”

From around the corner of the house, something scuffled in the mulch. Lapis remembered the door of his shop rattling in its frame earlier that day, and he glanced casually at Diamond Tiara, cocking a single eyebrow.

“And?” he asked again.

Diamond Tiara froze, then huffed and marched back toward the door. “Whatever!”

Lapis waited until he heard the door shut before he actually tried to get back to work. When he did, his thoughts were on a completely different path.

He didn’t know a lot about Cutie Marks, or what age most ponies usually got them. Hell, Lapis didn’t even know whether his Cutie Mark was really giving him a discount on Mend-Alls - for all he knew, it made them more expensive.

But Lapis knew enough about how much Cutie Marks mattered, and about how fiercely the Crusaders were looking for theirs, that his ‘and’ had been a lie. He’d lied to a child - sure, he’d lied before, and at least this time he’d prevented some possible bullying, but Lapis hadn’t needed to lie to Diamond Tiara. And what was worse, Lapis knew why he’d done it anyway.

I probably shouldn’t have, Lapis thought, as he put the last piece of the siding back together and started toward the front door of the manor. If Diamond Tiara sees me with Apple Bloom, then she’ll know I was messing with her, and that’ll put me on her shit-list, even more than I might already be. Which… probably won’t mean much, but her dad’s still literally Filthy Rich, so I might still have to keep a lookout.

Lapis knocked on the door, and Filthy Rich opened the door. “I believe that was seven minutes, Mr. Print.”

“I prefer my customers pleasantly surprised,” Lapis said. “…On that note, if you haven’t heard already, this one’s actually on the house, courtesy of the Mayor.”

Filthy Rich’s eyebrows shot up, and he glanced toward the corner of the house. “I’m not going to go back there and find my hydrangea destroyed, am I?”

“Not a chance,” Lapis said. “Not unless another stampede of wild bunnies blew through, anyway.”

Mr. Rich snorted. “I imagine I’d have noticed. Apologies for asking, but that little filly and her friends… well, they have something of a reputation.”

“…They mean well,” Lapis said, with some effort. He heard a smaller set of hoofsteps approaching from behind Filthy Rich, and glanced down to see Diamond Tiara standing beside her father, scowling intensely at something a ways behind Lapis and to the side. Well, that can only mean one thing. Welcome to the shit-list, population: me.

Oh well.

As Lapis finished up his small talk with Filthy Rich and turned back toward the street, he pondered whether he’d done the right thing. Sure, I stopped a couple of barbed words, but now Diamond Tiara’s just going to be that much more annoyed at Apple Bloom, next time they meet. Worse, I pointed out that Apple Bloom isn’t just a target dummy. So now Diamond Tiara might actually pay attention to Apple Bloom’s life, and start taunting her where it hurts.

Lapis rounded a corner, and found Apple Bloom waiting for him just around the corner of the Rich family’s fence, his saddlebags comically large on her back.

“So, I’m guessing you and Diamond Tiara aren’t friends?” Lapis asked, relieving Apple Bloom of the saddlebags.

“Well, uh… no,” Apple Bloom said, shaking her head. “Not at all. Ah… was really hopin’ Ah wouldn’t need to talk with her. That’s why Ah was tryin’ to get this over with so fast.”

“Yeah, I thought something was up,” Lapis said, turning back down the road. “Don’t worry about it. We’re not done yet, but it’s all downhill from here.”

Apple Bloom nodded, and they both started on their way, but as Lapis walked, he found himself wondering again. Even if I did do the right thing, was it for the right reasons? Did I help Apple Bloom because I wanted to help her, or did I just do it because of Amanda?

“Uh, mister?”

Lapis looked down, and saw that Apple Bloom was smiling up at him. “Thanks,” she said. “For, uh, what you said to Diamond Tiara back there, about me bein’ more’n just some filly without a Cutie Mark.”

“…Don’t worry about it,” Lapis said. “Or her.”

Apple Bloom beamed up at him, then turned her gaze to the road and began speaking. “Hey, have you ever fixed up a treehouse? ‘Cause there was this one time Ah wanted to fix a treehouse up real good…”

Lapis looked ahead as Apple Bloom continued speaking, telling him about how she and the Crusaders had managed to salvage a splinter-laden treehouse somewhere in Sweet Apple Acres. It wasn’t an easy story to follow, as she kept going on tangents, but Lapis had practice listening to kids, so he managed to react in the right places. Mostly.

Maybe it doesn’t matter why I lied to Diamond Tiara, Lapis thought, as Apple Bloom continued her story. Maybe Apple Bloom wouldn’t care whether she acts like my little sister. Maybe she just knows that somepony she barely met yesterday called bullshit on the pony who picks on her, and maybe Diamond Tiara’s words won’t sting quite so much from now on.

Lapis nodded, then kept heading down the street. That’s the hope, anyway.

A few hours later, Apple Bloom stepped back into the Apple family barn, feeling only slightly more tired than she’d expected to be. Applejack and Big Mac were both in the living room, engaged in what sounded like a serious discussion.

“…Ah know it’s gettin’ cold a mite faster’n usual,” Applejack was saying. “Ah just don’t know yet whether it’s time to get the cider presses pressin’- Oh, Apple Bloom! Where’ve y’all been?”

Apple Bloom paused, glancing up at Big Mac, who shook his head. “Nope. You messed up, you get to tell Applejack how it happened.”

Applejack shot a confused glance at Big Mac, then turned to look down at Apple Bloom. “Messed up how?”

“…Oh,” Apple Bloom said. “Well… Me and the Cutie Mark Crusaders set a magic metal wheel rollin’ around Ponyville yesterday, and Big Mac set me out to help fix up the town today.”

“Oh, didja now?” Applejack asked, then she paused and took a deep breath. “Alright, Ah can see you’re plumb tuckered out, so Ah’ll save the lecture for tomorrow. Fer now, who else is gettin’ discounts on apples?”

“Spike,” Apple Bloom said instantly. “He almost got hurt real bad, and… well, Lapis said it wasn’t mah fault, but Ah’d still feel terrible if Ah didn’t make it up to Spike.”

“Mighty considerate of you,” Applejack said. “Anypony else?”

“…Well, maybe Filthy Rich,” Apple Bloom said, her ears tipping back a little. “Maybe. But definitely Spike more’n him.”

Applejack sighed. “Apple Bloom, Mr. Rich may have more bits to spare than most other ponies, but that’s no excuse to be less charitable-” She cut herself off mid-lecture, her eyes opening as something seemed to occur to her. “Hold on, who-now said it wasn’t your fault?”

“Oh. Uh, the repair-pony, Mr. Print,” Apple Bloom said. “He was the pony what put together the wheel in the first place, and he said the whole thing is mostly his fault for not puttin’ a stop on it, even if it was me n' Sweetie Belle what set it off.”

Applejack frowned, glancing briefly at Big Mac before returning her gaze to Apple Bloom. “And by ‘Mr. Print,’ Ah’m guessin’ you mean Lapis Print?”

Apple Bloom nodded, and Big Mac opened his mouth to speak, but a new voice cut in from behind Apple Bloom. “Well, I guess that answers that question. So you're the pony who got this 'metal wheel' rolling?”

“Huh?” Apple Bloom turned around, just in time to see Twilight walk into the room, accompanied by a yawning Rainbow Dash. “Oh, hey Twilight! How’s… uh… your letters to the princess going?”

“They’re right on schedule,” Twilight said, smiling down at Apple Bloom. “As it happens, she wrote me back recently, saying thanks for the special report.”

“Yeah, yeah, congrats on the straight A’s,” Rainbow Dash said, flying into the Apple family’s living room over both Twilight and Apple Bloom’s heads. “So Applejack, you know this Lapis guy too?”

Applejack’s eyebrows shot up. “As it happens, Ah don’t. It’s Big Mac who’s acquainted with the feller, and Twilight almost raised a fuss about us not bein’ able to catch sight of… oh, for Pete’s sake. Rainbow Dash, Twilight, y’all aren’t lookin’ for him again, are you?”

“And you’re not?” Rainbow Dash said, spreading her hooves. “Applejack, if Pinkie can’t find him, then there’s gotta be something up with this pony. Something weird.”

“Now hold on just a moment,” said Big Mac, and everypony turned to look. “We’ve done this song and dance before, and Ah’m positive Lapis ain’t up to no good. Ah watched him take the fall for that whole magic-wheel mess in front of the Mayor - hay, Ah helped him stop the darn thing in the first place, and he risked his own neck more’n once!”

“But you also said he’s definitely got something going on,” Twilight said, gesturing to Big Mac, “and you won’t even say what you think it is!”

“He’s nervous, Twilight,” Applejack said, a clearly exasperated expression on her face. “We saved Equestria, remember? We’re famous now.”

“Ooooh,” Rainbow Dash said, and she settled to the floor, grinning as she reclined on the couch. “Yeah, that makes sense. Hey, AJ, you got any cider?”

“No, that’s not for another week, Ah don’t think,” Apple Bloom said.

There was a pause, and suddenly everypony in the room was looking down at Apple Bloom. She cocked her ears back in surprise, then glanced awkwardly to the side as she realized the other ponies had forgotten she was there. “Oh, and, uh… Ah think Lapis is alright too. He seems pretty nice, and he’s repairin’ the damage for free an’ all, so, uh… yeah, Ah say he’s a decent pony.”

“Free?” Applejack said, cocking an eyebrow, and just for a second, Apple Bloom saw a hint of a strange look on Big Macintosh’s face “…Not half-off, or two-thirds off, but free?”

“No, Lapis is fixing the town for free,” Twilight said. “I saw it on his notice board. ‘As the responsible party for yesterday’s incident, the Red Repair Shop is covering all repair charges associated with damage caused by the runaway mana compressor.’”

Applejack blinked slowly, then groaned, resting her forehead on her hoof. “Aw, shoot. Well, now Ah have to find him.”

Rainbow Dash looked up from the couch as Big Mac sat beside her. “How come?”

“‘Cause between takin’ the blame and helpin’ discipline Apple Bloom, this is the second and third time he’s done the Apple family a favor, and we still haven’t managed to give him an Apple family welcome!” Applejack said, waving a hoof.

“Nope,” Big Mac said. “He’s up to the fourth time, now. He helped with the leftover apples yesterday.”

“Well, then it’s the fourth time,” Applejack said, waving the same hoof again. “…An’ how come y’all didn’t keep him over for dinner then, Big Mac!”

“He was gone ‘fore Ah thought to ask,” Big Mac said, shrugging. “ ‘Sides, Ah was thinkin’ of somethin’ else. Lapis, he…” Big Mac paused, shaking his head. “Well, it ain’t my place to say, but Lapis told me a thing or two about where he came from.”

“…And?” Twilight asked, leaning forward.

Big Mac shook his head again. “Ah said Ah ain’t mah place…”

He was silent for another moment, as the rest of the ponies in the room stared. Then, Big Mac sighed, shut his eyes, and spoke. “He was uprooted. It wasn’ his choice, and it was none too pleasant. He didn’ say much else besides, but he misses home.”

For a second or two, nopony spoke, taking a second or two to soak in that information. Then, Applejack’s face grew somber, and she slowly nodded.

“That settles it,” she said. “Ah’m findin’ this pony, and we’re havin’ supper with him if Ah have to hog-tie him for it.”

“Luckily,” Twilight said, “assuming Pinkie’s brunch plans work, you shouldn’t need to.”

Rainbow Dash raised an intrigued eyebrow, and for a split second, that strange expression flickered across Big Mac’s face. This time, however, Applebloom caught a good look - hey, wait a minute! That’s his chess-winnin' face!

But… wait, we’re not playing chess.

Are we?

Twice Lucky: Beware Gravity

Lapis was back in the caves again, and this time he knew he was dreaming.

The cavern was well-illuminated, but Lapis wished it wasn’t. Though the warm, reddish-orange light that washed over the rich dark-brown stone was certainly convenient, it was also originating from a number of inconvenient sources - for example, the orange cracks in sections of the stone, revealing the thick orange magma seething just beneath the crust of stone; or else the geysers tucked away into divots in the floor, which would sit and grumble for seconds at a time before releasing searing gouts of flame. Lapis felt the geysers more than he heard them, they rumbled in his gut with every wash of fire they expelled.

Unfortunately, neither the fires nor the magma was Lapis’ primary concern. No, he was looking around the cave for minerals, and simultaneously, he was looking for the faintest glimpse of any kind of indigo smoke. The last time he’d had a dream about the caves, Princess Luna had made an appearance - and, Lapis suspected, she might mean to do so again. Lapis had a plan - or, well, an idea - to use in case Luna showed up, but he was hoping for at least a few seconds’ warning.

Why do all my weirder dreams involve this game, anyway? Lapis wondered, as he grappled over to a vein of blue-green crystal and began to swing his pick. Why do they happen in a game at all? Why don’t I dream about… I don’t know, situations from my real life?

Even here, he was a pony. Lapis tried not to think about it too hard, for fear that thinking about his form would somehow change it, but the sound of his hooves on the stone was just barely too unfamiliar to ignore completely. Was he just getting comfortable enough here, or was he getting too comfortable entirely-

He saw the first glimmer of indigo smoke out of the corner of his eye. Lapis blinked, then snapped his attention onto the vein of blue-green crystal in front of himself, continuing to mine it even as he felt his heart begin to thunder in his chest.

Then, continuing to swing his pick, Lapis shut his eyes and focused on what his face was feeling - and instead of the oppressive heat that should’ve been filling the shimmering air of the half-molten cavern, he found a faint, cool breeze washing across his face. Lapis focused on that breeze, and at once it became harder to swing the pick he held in the crook of his hoof, like he was trying to move his limbs through molasses. Lapis kept trying to swing the pick anyway, counting to ten as the hoofsteps approaching him from behind grew fainter…

…And as he reached zero, Lapis opened his eyes to find himself lying on his back with his bedsheets tangled around his hoof. Lapis blinked the last haze of sleep from his eyes, looking at the window, and grinned as he watched the curtains swaying in the cold breeze of the early-autumn night.

Step one, Lapis thought, throwing his blankets off himself and walking over to the open window, suppressing a shiver as the chill night air washed over his fur. Spot Luna when she’s trying to enter my dreams.

Step two. Let her do whatever, but act like I don’t know she’s there. Instead, keep acting casual… but at the same time, wake myself up, by finding and using a source of grounding stimulation in the waking world.

Step three… Lapis looked to the side, then levitated a glass of water off his nightstand to his side, taking a slow, careful drink. Stay awake for a little bit. Not for long, just for longer than it would take to get back to sleep normally.

Lapis took another drink of water, staring out the window at the night sky, watching the stars twinkle around the pale, gleaming moon. Step four. Go back to sleep, stay ready to wake up, repeat steps one through three until Luna goes back to doing her job, and hope that I get enough REM sleep to not go insane before then.

Lapis yawned, then set the glass of water back on his nightstand and went to bed, pulling the blankets back up to his shoulders. Yeah, this is gonna suck. But, unlike Twilight or her friends, I don’t think I’ve seriously gotten Luna’s attention yet. Her curiosity, maybe, but not her attention. Ergo, for the sake of not somehow fucking up the timeline, I need to keep interaction to a bare minimum.

Slowly, Lapis’ eyelids drifted closed. The ideal would be to look like just one more pony with nightmares, let Luna… do whatever she does about nightmares, and then let that be that. I just… don’t know whether Luna can tell the difference between fake issues and real ones, and if she can, then faking would instantly provoke her. So, I just need to steer completely clear of her, in ways that could be coincidence, until I get back home.

Just… another deadline…

A few days later, Lapis opened the saddlebags on the workbench before him and rummaged through their contents one more time. Final check. Is everything here?

“Map and compass: check,” he muttered aloud. “Notepad and pencil: check. Grappling gauntlet, bandages, splints, and ointment, check. Snacks, rope, and bear bell… all check.”

Lapis fished the bear bell out from the pack and tied it onto the side of the saddlebags, where it jingled almost cheerfully as he slung the saddlebags onto his back. “There we go. Alright, Nikki, I’m headed out. Are you absolutely sure you’re coming with?”

Nikki, who was perched at the corner of the workbench, firmly nodded, then perched atop Lapis’ head before he got the chance to argue with her. Lapis still tried, as he ascended the stairs out of the basement. “It’s a long way to the Castle of the Two Sisters, you know. Through the Everfree. I don’t know for sure whether anything in there eats pigeons, but… well, do you really want to take the risk?”

Nikki cuffed Lapis’ ear with her wing, and he sighed as he pushed open the closet door and stepped into the shop proper. “Look, I’m not saying you can’t handle it. I’d just feel terrible if you got hurt, that’s all.”

Lapis pushed open his shop door and stepped into the streets of Ponyville, pausing only briefly to glance at his request board. He still wasn’t done cleaning up after the mana-compressor fiasco, but most of the damage that his Mend-All spells could fix was taken care of. He scribbled an out-for-the-day notice, tacked it to the board, then started for the edge of town.

Somehow, Lapis didn’t have a moment of hesitation until he reached the boundary of the Everfree Forest.

This made sense, when he thought about it. It was early enough in the morning that the streets of Ponyville were mostly empty, and though a few passersby had smiled and waved, nopony had stopped to ask Lapis what he was doing, so he hadn’t really had reason to think about his journey.

Now, though, Lapis had reason to pause. He traced the path into the Everfree with his gaze, standing just a few feet before the place where the dark, dense-packed canopy of the forest cast its shadow upon the dirt road. Somehow, the edge of darkness at Lapis’ feet felt like a threshold, and though Lapis knew he would need to cross it, that knowledge seemed to be preventing him from doing so.

The more that Lapis gazed into the misty shadows beneath the deep-green canopy, the more he began to notice a distinct… strangeness to the Everfree. He could hear birdsong drifting from the trees, and the faint scuffling of animals in the undergrowth, but both seemed off, somehow. The birds’ choruses were unfamiliar, and the rustling didn’t seem to match the patterns of any animals he was familiar with - not the hurried, halting rummage of squirrels searching for acorns, or the slow, persistent scuffle of a badger or skunk trundling along a game trail between foraging sites. And the more obvious noises, like the quiet howling and occasional shrieks far in the distance, certainly did nothing to settle Lapis’ nerves.

Nature, Lapis realized, had a song - and the Everfree Forest was either off-beat and out of key, or it wasn’t singing to the same tune at all.

A warm chuckle came from behind Lapis, and he almost jumped out of his skin. “I see that the Forest has made you quite meek. Is there anything that I may help you to seek?”

“Jeez, Zecora!” Lapis said, holding a hoof to his chest. “You scared the sh- …Yeah, hi. I was actually about to go looking for the Castle of the Two Sisters. You wouldn’t be willing to draw me a path, would you?”

Zecora shook her head, the golden bands on her hoof and neck jingling slightly as she stepped forward to stand next to Lapis, a slightly larger pair of saddlebags slung across her own cloaked back. “Within these trees’ reach, no maps’ lines can guide. It is best if you just go along for the ride.”

“Oh, great,” Lapis muttered, shoving the rolled-up map back into his saddlebag. “Well, do you have any tips for getting to the Castle, or do I just… wander the path until I get there?”

Zecora considered for a moment. “For saying this much, you may think me obtuse, but there is one thing I know that may be of use. Please, do not think I’ve not noticed your bird-”

Nikki cocked an eyebrow atop Lapis’ head, but made no comment.

“But there is safety in numbers,” Zecora finished, “or so I have heard.”

Lapis breathed a sigh of relief. “Honestly, I’d love some help, if you’re not too busy just now.”

Zecora smiled. “You forget, I seek answers within those walls too. Let us stop at my hut, so I may finish my brew. Then to the Castle, we will proceed, assuming we both have all that we need.”

Zecora stepped past Lapis and into the Everfree, and after a moment’s hesitation, Lapis followed her over the threshold.

Stopping by Zecora’s hut took a surprisingly short amount of time. Zecora seemed to have had her “brew” simmering in a cooking pot for the entire time she’d been out, and all she did was remove a few sprigs of mint from her saddlebags, crush them in a mortar and pestle, then sprinkle them into the cauldron. Then, after Zecora had ladled the contents into some flasks, they were on their way.

About half an hour later, Lapis and Zecora came to a place where the path grew slightly wider, and a few rays of sunshine poked through the canopy. Lapis looked up at the gap in the trees, tracing the ray of sunlight to the center of the path, and stopped in place.

Zecora paused, glancing back. “Hm. Your face has grown long. If I may ask ask, is there something wrong?”

Lapis blinked, then snorted. “Nope. Sorry, you didn’t say anything wrong, your word choice was just… It doesn’t matter. Let’s go.”

He started forward again, and after a moment’s hesitation, Zecora followed.

“So, um, just to make sure,” Fluttershy said. “You understand that this isn’t going to be anything fancy, right?”

“Yep!” Pinkie chirped, bouncing back across the floor of the Apple family’s spare barn. The room was dark and a little dusty, but jam-packed full of crates, which were in turn overflowing with a variety of brightly-colored decorations.

“And, um, that we’re just going to sit down, talk, and eat our meals, right?”

“Mm-hm!” Pinkie said, picking up a large metal tank.

“And that nothing too exciting, or extravagant, or big and spectacular is part of the deal?”

“Just a casual brunch,” Pinkie confirmed, carrying the metal tank back across the room and setting it gently inside a wagon filled with creamy-white cloth.

“Okay, good,” Fluttershy said. “So, um, if you don’t mind, what are you doing with all the stuff in that wagon?”

Pinkie grinned, shaking her head. “Oh, Fluttershy, dont’cha see? It’s a hot air balloon!” She paused, cocking her head and tapping her hoof with her chin. “Or it will be, anyway, once it’s all filled up with hot air, but that won’t be happening until later this week.”

“Okay,” Fluttershy said again. “And… well, if it’s not too much trouble, why are you piloting a hot air balloon later this week?”

“Uh, duh!” Pinkie said. “We’re only going to be hosting the best, partiest Welcome-To-Ponyville Make-Up-Casual-Brunch that Equestria’s ever seen! Of course there’s got to be a hot air balloon!”

“…Well, if you think so,” Fluttershy said, looking to the side and scuffing the ground with her hoof. “I’m just not so sure, Pinkie Pie. Aren’t you worried it might be a little much?”

“Are you kidding? If anything, I’m worried it won’t be enough!” Pinkie paused, staring at the wagon, then her eyes widened in horror. “…Oh no. I’m right! There’s no way it’ll be enough!” She zipped away for a second, Fluttershy’s mane ruffling in her wake, then appeared with a stack of several multicolored sheets of construction paper. “We’re going to need way more confetti - quick, start shredding this!”

“Oh,” Fluttershy said, as Pinkie set the stack of construction paper on the floor and zipped away again. “…Um, do I need to use scissors? If I shred this by hoof, it might just look messy-”

Pinkie didn’t reply verbally. Instead, she zipped back over with a bag slung across her back, then descended upon the paper with her hooves. There was a sound like a chainsaw as the construction paper disintegrated, Pinkie shoveling hoof-fuls of perfectly-uniform confetti over her shoulder and into the bag with enough speed that none of it had the time to scatter anywhere else.

“Oh,” Fluttershy said again, as Pinkie Pie pulled a rope tight around the opening of the bag, then zipped away. “Pinkie Pie, I’m really not sure how to say this, but I really do think you’re going just a little bit overboard.”

Pinkie pulled her head out from the inside of a large crate, the completely serious look on her face jarringly offset by the clown wig’s worth of streamers draped over her head. “Fluttershy. Your advice is super-duper great, and I’m really, really happy you’re helping me out, but I think there’s a couple little words you’re forgetting: Two. Months.”

Pinkie continued speaking as she jammed her head back into the crate, which seemed to be using various flavors of streamers and banners as a substitute for packing peanuts. “I’ve never, ever, never-never-ever missed somepony’s Welcome-to-Ponyville party for two whole months before. There’s no way I can throw just any casual welcome brunch after that!” She pulled her head out of the crate and bounced back over to the wagon, carrying a massive curved strip of blue fabric in her mouth and spitting it out onto the top of the wagon. “So, I’m not going to!”

“You’re… not?” Fluttershy asked.

Pinkie shook her head, smiling back at her. “Nope! I’m going to throw the best, partiest welcome brunch that Equestria’s ever seen! So yes, we need confetti, streamers, banners, at least forty invitees, two tables of cupcakes, and a hot air balloon for wide-area outdoor confetti dispersal!”

“…Oh,” Fluttershy said, her ears flopping back atop her head as she looked back at the wagon with the hot air balloon. “Oh my goodness.”

“I know, right?!” Pinkie said, her ears flopping back. “I mean, I’d thought that just the regular party cannon would work, but it turns out regular balloons aren’t enough to lift it!”

“Well, um, that is surprising,” Fluttershy said, nodding, then pausing as an idea occurred to her. “…But, well, if you’re going to throw confetti over that big of an area, don’t you think that maybe it’s a good idea to ask Mayor Mare if it’s okay?”

Pinkie Pie gasped, stopping in her tracks. “Oh my gosh! Fluttershy, you’re right!”

Fluttershy stopped, her eyes widening in surprise. “I am?”

Pinkie nodded, tapping her hoof against her chin as she sunk into deep thought. “I’ve got a confetti permit for this kinda thing, but it only covers areas of about six hundred square hooves. If I get the balloon up too high, this is gonna be…” Pinkie paused, then darted over to a nearby chalkboard, where she started drawing circles and squares at high speed.

“Well,” Fluttershy said, gingerly approaching Pinkie from behind, “if it really is going to be big, then we’d definitely better ask Mayor Mare first.”

“Oh, it’s going to be big, alright,” Pinkie said, setting the chalk down at the base of the board and plopping to a seat to survey her work. “We’re looking at an area of at least two thousand eight hundred square hooves, and that’s only if it’s not windy. And even that’s only if the balloon can get off the ground in the first place!”

Fluttershy glanced at the chalkboard, and her eyes widened as she realized that there was only a single number on the board - instead, the rest of the surface was taken up by a large, ornate picture of a pie composed of numerous smaller, overlapping shapes and dotted lines, underneath all of which the number 2,872.75… was scrawled in large, loopy digits. “…Um, are you sure about that, Pinkie?”

“Mm-hm!” Pinkie said, nodding with a grin and waving her hoof at the board. “It’s a circle, silly! Circles are all about pie!”

Fluttershy briefly glanced to the side. “…Maybe we should ask Twilight to check your math.”

The appearance of the Castle of the Two Sisters wasn’t encouraging.

What caught Lapis’ eye first, as he stared across the ragged, rope-bound wooden bridge toward the castle, were the towers at either end of the structure. They were tall, and the cones of their rooftops narrowed to needle-sharp points. One seemed to be made of darker stone than the other - though that could have been a trick of the light. Between them, the rest of the castle’s wreckage seemed almost to drape like a hammock, a cradle of jagged wood and shattered stone.

It rested in the center of a rough peninsula, a triangular spit of land with gorges on both the near sides, stretching out of sight to either side of the castle. The rope bridge across the chasm swayed as Lapis and Zecora crossed it, one at a time. As they crossed, Nikki stayed perched atop one of the posts on the castle’s side of the bridge, staring intently down at the knots of fraying rope that held the bridge together.

Lapis didn’t cross until after Zecora did, and he stopped in place with every creak and groan of the bridge’s worn, damp planks. He wasn’t sure exactly when they’d first fallen silent, but now that they had, he was finding it difficult to break the silence. Even after Nikki touched back down atop his head, all that Lapis could hear as they advanced toward the front gate of the castle were his and Zecora’s hoofsteps, and the wind whispering in the distant trees.

The door was intact, as was the doorframe. The stone wall around that doorframe, however, was toast. Lapis half-expected Zecora to simply jump through some hole in the wall, but instead she pulled open the door and stepped through.

Lapis and Nikki followed her into what seemed like a gatehouse, though as Lapis looked around he saw no remnants of the medieval defensive features he might’ve expected - no arrow slits, no grates for buckets of boiling oil, nothing. Instead, the room appeared to be little more than a hallway, with a series of spade-shaped doors on the walls to either side, connected by smooth stone walkways through a possibly-intentional indoor meadow. At the very end of the gatehouse was the entryway to a pair of staircases, above which hung two pennants - the one on the right was yellow-orange, emblazoned with a white alicorn standing before a sunny sky, while the one to the left was indigo, depicting a blue-gray alicorn standing before a starry night with a crescent moon.

Lapis was briefly tempted to search through all the side rooms before going anywhere near the two staircases, but as Zecora started down the hall, he shook off the impulse and hurried after her. This is a castle, not a dungeon. It was designed to be lived and worked in, not to be fought through.
…Even if this hallway looks like it heads toward a boss room.

Lapis headed up the staircase to the left, beneath the banner of the blue-gray alicorn, and started looking around. To either side, hallway lined with suits of armor, stone busts and stained-glass windows extended out and forward, curving out of sight.

“Huh,” Lapis muttered, approaching the nearest suit of dark iron armor, Nikki touching down on the edge of the pedestal where the armor sat. As far as Lapis knew, the suit of armor was entirely decorative - and indeed, between the multitude of spikes and the section of plating designed to encase the wearer’s tail, he didn’t have high hopes for its actual practicality. Still, it was definitely armor, and - if it was meant to be worn - then that meant it was worth checking over for any interesting sections of artifice.

Carefully, Lapis pulled off the helmet, looked it over - and stopped, as something about the armor’s dull sheen caught his eye. “Well, what do we have here?” he muttered.

“That was quite quick,” Zecora noted, trotting up behind him. “Have you already caught some trick?”

“Not exactly,” Lapis said, showing her the helmet. “Look at the metal this helmet’s made of. I thought it was iron at first, but the sheen of the stuff just isn’t right for that. Between that and the color… well, this is a big leap to make without a chemistry kit, but I’m pretty sure this armor’s made of steel.”

Zecora cocked her head, examining the armor. “An unfamiliar metal, to be sure. But is it not merely iron, impure?”

“Steel is an alloy of iron and carbon,” Lapis said, beginning to dismantle the rest of the suit of armor, looking over each piece for any hint of gems or runes as he went and sketching out each plate. “It’s a lot stronger than regular old iron, and it’s not terrible to get - honestly, you can make it from pig iron alone, as long as you’ve got a big enough heat-proof vat and the means to bubble oxygen through it. Problem is, you need to get that pig iron hot enough to liquefy, and then some, to the tune of two thousand seven hundred degrees Fahrenheit. I don’t think I’ve seen any steel since I wo- uh, since I arrived in Ponyville, so I assumed we didn’t know how to make it.”

Zecora passed the helmet back to Lapis, looking over his shoulder as he sketched. “An ancient metal, demanding heat’s worst ire… I wonder, was this armor forged in dragonfire?”

Lapis frowned, then erased and re-sketched the curve of a shoulder plate. “It might help, but it wouldn’t be required, either. You can make it with the right kind of kiln and regular fuel for a fire, it just takes all day to make even a little bit.” Lapis checked the last few pieces over, finding to his disappointment that they were entirely free of artifice, and sighed as he began to reassemble the armor on its stand. “Still, it’s definitely interesting. Once upon a time, steel was common enough that the Princesses could use it to decorate their halls… but today, it’s nowhere. What happened?”

Zecora stared down the length of the hall. “Perhaps Discord, or Nightmare Moon. To say, it may still be too soon. If we are to glean the truths we need, we had best seek a place to read.”

“Yeah, this castle’s got to have a library somewhere,” Lapis agreed, sliding his notepad back into his saddlebag. “Let’s keep looking.”

He and Zecora stood up, and as they walked away, Lapis thought he heard an extra set of hoofsteps following them, halfway blotted out by the sound of Nikki’s wingbeats. Lapis stopped and glanced back.

The hallway was empty, with nothing but stained glass and shadowed armor breaking up the monotonous stone for as far as Lapis could see. Probably just getting a little nervous, Lapis thought, turning back toward Zecora. It’s a deserted castle, of course it’s going to be a little spooky.

That didn’t stop Lapis from being relieved when, as he went after Zecora, the only thing that followed him was an echo of his own hoofsteps.

“Oh, hello, Fluttershy,” Twilight said, as Fluttershy walked into the library. “I was actually just about to go looking for you! I found this great compendium of mustelids, and I wanted to know whether you’d already read it.”

“What? Oh, thank you,” Fluttershy said, as a book with a weasel on the cover floated over to her side, encased in Twilight’s magic. “Um, Twilight. Could I ask you to help me with something?”

Twilight glanced over toward Fluttershy, and a half-dozen books floated back into their places on the shelves. “What’s the matter?”

Fluttershy scuffed her hoof against the floor. “Well, I’m not so sure how to say this, but it’s about Pinkie Pie. I’ve been helping her plan that brunch we mentioned. She should be here soon, and I’ve been trying to tell her something, but she just won’t listen to me. Do you think you could help me-”

Twilight smiled, walking over to Fluttershy’s side. “Say no more, Fluttershy. I understand completely.”

“You do?” Fluttershy asked, perking up.

Twilight nodded, stepping back behind the counter. “Oh, I do. Honestly, I can’t even count the number of times I’ve had to ask Spike to say something for me.” Twilight paused, cocking her head as a series of index cards began to float in an arc behind her. “Well, actually I can count them, but that doesn’t really matter. The point is… oh, hello, Pinkie Pie!”

“Hey, Twilight!” Pinkie said, straining as she pushed the chalkboard into the library. “Sorry to bother you, but I could use a really little teensy-weensy bit of math help.”

“Math help?” Twilight asked, cocking her head. “What for?”

“Well, I’ve never fired a confetti cannon from up in my balloon before,” Pinkie said, “and my confetti permit only covers areas of about six hundred square hooves. If I want to go any bigger, I need to go get super-duper special permission from the Mayor!”

“Okay,” Twilight said, a frown creasing her brow.

“Bu-ut,” Pinkie continued, “I wanna be absolutely, positively, one hundred percent sure about how big of an area I’m going to cover, before I go ask the Mayor.”

“Oh,” Twilight said, a faint look of concern beginning to grow on her face. “Uh, that’s a lot of math, Pinkie Pie. …Why would you even need to-”

“Oh, no, don’t worry about doing all the math,” Pinkie said, waving her hooves. “I already did it!”

Twilight’s eyes went wide. “Wait, you did?”

“Mm-hm!” Pinkie Pie nodded. “It turns out, if you fire a rotating confetti cannon over and over again, from exactly twenty hooves off the ground, you wind up covering a circular area of about two thousand eight hundred square hooves. But anyway, Fluttershy was suggesting before I came in here that I should have you look over the math, and so I was wondering if maybe you could?”

“Okay, well, if all you’re calculating is the area of a circle,” Twilight said, stepping out from behind the counter and approaching the chalkboard, “and since you’ve already brought everything, I guess it’d be no trouble. …Although, I’m a little curious how you figured out the distance that the party cannon fires-”

“Great!” Pinkie chirped. Then, she spun the chalkboard around. “Okay, so does it look right?”

For a second or two, Twilight didn’t say anything. Instead, she stared at the chalkboard, her ears slowly folding back atop her head as her expression went perfectly flat.

“Pinkie,” Twilight eventually said. “Please, don’t tell me that’s a pie.”

“Okey-dokey-lokey!” Pinkie said.

There followed a few seconds of silence. Twilight glared at the chalkboard, Fluttershy anxiously watched Twilight, and Pinkie stared out the window at a passing butterfly.

“It’s a pie, isn’t it?” Twilight eventually asked.

Pinkie looked back over, then shook her head firmly. “Nuh-uh-uh! You told me not to tell you, and I’m not going to tell you, because I’m telling you, you told me not to tell you!”

“…What?” Twilight asked.

Pinkie sighed. “I saaaaid,-”

“No!” Twilight snapped. “No, no, no, no. That is not math. That doesn’t make any sense. That doesn’t even pretend it makes sense!”

“Oh dear,” Fluttershy said. “Um, Twilight-”

Twilight held up a hoof. “It’s alright, Fluttershy. Honestly, I’m glad you asked.” Twilight took a deep breath, then narrowed her eyes in determination. “Pinkie, could I ask you to bring your party cannon here, along with nine blasts’ worth of confetti?”

“Done!” Pinkie said, wheeling the party cannon out from behind the chalkboard.

Twilight’s eyelid twitched, but she maintained her look of determination. “Great. We’re going to do this math, we’re going to do it right, and that means we’re going to do it from scratch. Fluttershy, take this, and mark the floor by the confetti cannon’s barrel.”

“Oh,” Fluttershy said, as a pencil levitated over to her. “Um, Twilight, this isn’t what I - mmf!”

“Once the confetti cannon goes off,” Twilight continued, removing her magical grip from the pencil now stuffed into Fluttershy’s mouth, “find the farthest piece of confetti from the cannon, and mark the floor next to it. We’ll need to do that nine times total; three times from zero, ten, and twenty hooves off the ground. Once that’s done, we’ll combine each measurement into an average distance for each height, and then we’re going to graph them. And after that…”

Twilight grinned. “Well, that’s where the fun begins.”

“Fun!” Pinkie chirped from behind the confetti cannon. Then, with a boom that rattled the windows, the cannon went off, and a thousand pieces of colorful paper spun through the air to settle on the ground. Some of it landed on Fluttershy, settling atop her ears and mane, and the pencil in her mouth drooped along with her ears as she sighed.

Lapis rounded a corner, peered through a doorway, and stopped in his tracks. “Bingo,” he muttered.

There it was: the castle library, in about half its glory. Dozens of tall rows of shelves stretched toward the ceiling, the halls between them interrupted by long tables with reading chairs, or else by massive, strangely realistic stone busts of equines. The ceiling of the library was mostly missing, and the swirling dust and cracked stone floors almost glowed in the bright sunlight - thankfully, none of the books seemed to be damaged.

And oh, were there books. Hundreds upon hundreds of them, all the way to the far wall of the library, their metal-edged canvas covers dyed every color of the rainbow and then some. Unfortunately, none of them appeared to have any kind of classification system or labels. “…You see any indexes anywhere?” Lapis asked.

“No, I’m afraid, not immediately. Perhaps in drawers is where they’ll be,” Zecora replied. “I believe we seek a history?”

Lapis nodded, and Zecora smiled as she replied. “Then, I will call you, once one I see.”

“Got it,” Lapis said, as Zecora turned and started toward the outskirts of the library. “I’ll just poke around for a bit. If I start yelling, or Nikki comes to get you, that means I’m in trouble.”

“And if you hear something screaming, then please have no fear,” Zecora called over her shoulder. “Its only meaning is that that something drew too near.”

Lapis paused to think though that statement as Zecora rounded a corner and vanished from sight. …So, does that mean that she’ll be screaming because something got too close to her, or that whatever gets too close to her will end up screaming?

Guess I’ll figure that out when I need to. Lapis shrugged, then started down the aisle of the library, scanning titles as he went. Policy, policy, policy, policy… wow, that’s a lot of paperwork. There’s no way this is just a legal library, right?

Lapis crossed to the next row of aisles, glanced down it, and looked over the first book that caught his eye. ‘Uphill Battles: The Complete Guide to Boulder Iconography in 8th-Century Griffonic Stonecarving, by Lord Sissy Hooves.’ Nope, definitely not a legal library. Social sciences, maybe… assuming the distinction between social sciences and normal sciences had even been invented when this library was built. I wonder how magic would fall in?

“You mind helping me look, too?” Lapis asked, glancing up at Nikki. “Anything to do with history, artifice, or magic. Is that enough to work with?”

Nikki nodded, then took off, heading toward the upper shelves and looking over each at random. Lapis watched her for a second or two, then headed to a different aisle and started checking titles again. How would magic classify? Artifice is definitely a science, it reminds me of programming, but regular magic would almost have to be its own special chunk. Like theoretical physics, or something.

Lapis paused as he saw an interesting title, then rolled his eyes as he realized it was only about techniques for painting. He switched aisles again, but stopped to stare as something shone, just for a moment, far down the shelves.

There weren’t many solid patches of roof left, but most of those that remained were at the edges of the building, forming jagged patches of shadow at the edges of the room. One such patch sat far down the aisle from Lapis, casting the space behind a stone bust into darkness - and in that darkness, Lapis thought he’d seen something twinkling, just for a moment or two.

Lapis glanced toward the bookshelves, then grabbed an especially thick, heavy-looking volume off the shelf and began to advance down the aisle, toward the odd patch of darkness. It’s probably nothing, he thought, but just in case…

He raised the book high and rounded the bust, and in that space he found… a scrap of tarnished silver, probably from the corner of a book’s cover, sitting atop the shoulder of the bust. Over Lapis’ head, Nikki called out, and he looked up to see her peering down from what looked like the remains of a balcony.

“Something up there?” Lapis asked. Nikki nodded, then withdrew her head. Lapis looked around for any signs of a staircase, but found none forthcoming - so, grimacing, he reached into his pack and went back down the aisle the way he’d come, turning his back on the piece of silver just too early to see it fading out of existence.

Once Lapis had gotten a good viewing angle, he reached into his pack and pulled out the grappling bracelet he’d made earlier. He slid it onto his right hoof - then, trying to keep his eyes firmly on the wall directly above the balcony, Lapis wrapped his telekinesis around the bracelet’s nub of iron.

The pull-and-weight of the spell slammed into Lapis at once, and he fought to keep his knees steady as a wave of weakness washed across his body, starting from his horn and working its way down to his hooves. Lapis felt his own magic wrapping around his body again, the unfamiliar sensation of being engulfed in warm, flowing liquid catching him off-guard almost as much as rising the first few inches off the ground did.

Then, the spell really kicked in, and Lapis rose toward the balcony at an angle, almost as if he was going up an escalator. Lapis looked down, and regretted it at once - he was ten feet off the ground after only a few seconds, and still rising, with nothing but his own magic to keep him from falling. Whoa… okay, calm down. I did the math, there’s nothing to worry about here. This bracelet’s got enough juice in it to take me fifty feet off the ground, straight up. There’s no way it’ll run out.

…Probably.

Lapis swallowed, and he felt his ears flop back atop his head as he rose above the tops of the shelves. Three long, uncomfortable seconds later, he slid into the air just above the balcony, his hooves knocking against the railing - and then, he continued onward, until he was just a few inches away from the wall he’d been looking at when he cast the spell.

Then, finally, the bracelet’s effect ended, and Lapis dropped to the ground, his knees buckling slightly with the impact. He took a deep breath, and carefully stood all the way up, sliding the bracelet off his hoof just in case as he took a closer look at the spot where he now stood.

The balcony was a semicircle, about ten feet across where it was closest to the wall, fenced off by a simple, crumbling stone railing. The floor was wooden, and mostly covered by a crusty, sun-bleached rug that might once have been red. Near one side of the balcony was a large, squashy armchair with moth-eaten cushions, beside which sat a coffee table that held a pair of books. There wasn’t any doorway leading onto or off of the balcony, which confused Lapis for a few seconds - oh, wait. A third of the population here has wings. Right.

Speaking of winged creatures, Nikki was perched on the railing nearby, a thoroughly unimpressed look on her face. She pointed toward the coffee table with her wing, and Lapis walked over to take a closer look at the literature.

The first of the two books was a slim volume bound in cloudy-white canvas, the image of a single spread wing emblazoned across the front cover in silver leaf. Opening the book revealed several short paragraphs of large, friendly hoofwriting, occasionally broken up by diagrams of pegasi in flight. The positions of their wings were picked out in painstaking detail, and bands of the feathers across the wings were color-coded into sections and labeled. Lapis caught sight of the label ‘banking turn’ scrawled above one of the diagrams, multiple curving lines traced across the wings from front to back, and realized what kind of book he was holding - an introduction to the aerodynamics of pegasus flight. …So, why was it up here? I mean, if someone had gotten up here, then you’d think they already knew how to fly.

Book number two was much thicker, much heavier, and bound in thick, dark brown canvas. On its spine, it bore a small, yellowed label, which read: Imports, MDCXIX, Vol. III. Lapis cracked it open and immediately started coughing as a cloud of dust rose from the tome, his eyes watering as he scanned the page:

Cargo delivered to the R.P.S. Castle, received from HMS Persistence, 1619 autumn visit
- 12 crates woven rope, good condition
- 30 crates mountain berry preserves, damaged
- 256 steel ingots, excellent condition (Pinion forged)
- 2 items griffon stonecarving, perfect condition
- Message for Gara Pinion (delivered directly)

“Griffon stonecarving, mountain berries, and steel ingots, all coming in on the same boat…” Lapis said, looking over to Nikki. “How much you want to bet that boat came in from Griffonstone?” And if it did… honestly, first aluminum and now steel. How come the griffons know all the good metalworking techniques? Is it just because they don’t get the chance to focus on magic, or something?

Lapis considered, then slid the book on pegasus aerodynamics into his saddlebags, keeping the shipping records by his side for the moment. “Good find, Nikki. Zecora’ll be interested to see this.” And the whole question of how pegasi fly has been confusing me, anyway - there’s no way they can flap their wings that slowly and still stay flying, unless either aerodynamics have different laws here or magic is involved. Hopefully it’s just magic, or else future projects are going to be a lot more difficult.

Lapis took a few steps toward the stone railing and looked out across the top of the library shelves, Nikki perching atop his head. He looked back at the book of shipping records, then turned the page - only to find that the rest of the book was blank. Wait. So either that batch of imports from Griffonstone was the last shipment of the quarter… or, if this is the latest book of imports to the castle, then these were the last goods ever delivered here. Which… it probably isn’t, but still.

Lapis looked back up, taking in the tops of the library shelves, the remnants of the stone walls and stained-glass windows and clay shingles, and suddenly, he wondered what the castle might’ve looked like when ponies had lived here. Did it get dark in the library, when there was no sun to shine through those windows? Was there some magical solution, or did ponies have to navigate by lantern-light? Was this place reserved for nobility, or were there students here, too?

He could almost hear them - the hushed hubbub of a hundred voices murmuring all at once, putting their heads together at a library table to crack obscure mysteries, complete assigned research, prepare for some coming test. He remembered disappearing into the stacks, finding a staircase and ascending to a quieter floor, how much relief he’d felt at getting away from all that noise - and now, Lapis wasn’t sure how much he wouldn’t give to hear it all again.

Lapis winced as he felt his heart wrench, and he shook his head clear of those thoughts. Focus. For now, I need to get… down…

Had that third book always been on the table? It was a tall, narrow volume with a blank deep indigo cover, made from a substance too smooth to be canvas and too matte to be leather. The edges of the parchment pages appeared to have been dusted with silver, and the metal’s dull gleam seemed just a touch brighter than it ought to be. Lapis levitated the tome over toward his side, and found it to be surprisingly heavy in his grip.

“…Cursed?” Lapis asked, looking up.

From her perch atop Lapis’ head, Nikki cocked an eyebrow, then shrugged.

Lapis hesitated for a moment, then set the book on the floor at the opposite end of the balcony from himself. Then, after hunkering down behind the chair and pointing the book at the vast gap in the rooftop, Lapis opened the book.

When no sinister charge of magic erupted from the newly-bared pages, Lapis peeked around the chair, taking a closer look at the crisp, pale parchment - and found that the book was blank. He hesitated, then pulled the book over and started flicking through the pages, checking for any sign of actual information, but came up blank - right up until the very last page, where a trio of sentences written in narrow, flowing cursive glimmered with midnight-blue ink.

“Imagine thou art enclosed within a cell of stone,” Lapis read aloud. “Imagine thy magic sealed away, and any doors, windows, drains, and furniture are absent all. How dost thou escape?” He glanced up at Nikki again. “Yeah, this book’s totally cursed. You think I should just leave it here, or…?”

Nikki shrugged, then jerked her head back toward where Zecora had originally gone. Lapis thought about it, then nodded. “Definitely. Zecora should have a better idea than me of what to do with a cursed book.”

Lapis tucked the probably-cursed book into his saddlebags, climbed up onto the edge of the balcony, and was just about to climb down when something else glimmered at the corner of his eye. He turned, looking up and to the right, and saw another ledge mounted to a higher portion of the library wall - this one, however, was wooden instead of stone, and it appeared to have an entire bookshelf to itself, set inside the stone of the wall. Lapis hesitated, glancing between the floor and the second ledge, then made his decision.

Once again sliding the grappling gauntlet onto his hoof, Lapis turned to face the far nook, then engaged the gauntlet. Again, he felt a draining sensation as his magic took hold, and heard the wooden base of the higher reading nook creak as his weight was magically put there, instead.

Lapis rose a few inches off the balcony - and the wooden floor of the reading nook broke off the wall with a harsh, crackling crunch.

Oh, shit-

Instantly, Lapis dropped back onto the balcony, scrambling away from the wall and wrapping his hooves around the far guardrails just as the next portion of the gauntlet’s spell kicked in. At once, Lapis felt the liquid warmth of his own magic wrapping around his body, the tugging current trying to drag him upward - toward the empty air where the wooden floor of the reading nook had been. Nikki cried out in alarm, and Lapis shut his eyes as he felt his grip begin to loosen, proving no match for the relentless pull of the gauntlet’s spell. I’ve got to start putting more safeguards on these things- oh, fuckfuckfuck-!

The stone support that Lapis was holding cracked, and he was pulled backward into the air. The layer of magic enveloping his body vanished as soon as he was over the edge of the balcony, and the wind rushed past his face as he fell toward the stone floor-

And all at once, everything went blue, and Lapis yelped as a far, far stronger current than before roared to life around his body, pushing him upward with such force that he slowed almost to a stop-

He hit the ground just as Zecora came galloping around the corner, Nikki close behind. The back of his head smacked into the cold stone floor, and Lapis shut his eyes as his vision suddenly flashed white, a high whine that he’d previously assumed was unique to video-game flash-bangs filling his ears.

When the ringing in Lapis’ ears began to fade, he opened his eyes, and found Zecora looming over him, shouting a rapid sequence of words he couldn’t quite make out. Either she’s speaking another language, or I’m brain-damaged now.

“I’m good,” Lapis said, and though the words sounded muffled to his ears, they were still entirely comprehensible. Slowly, he rolled over and climbed to his hooves, swaying as his gut lurched. “A little dizzy, but I’m okay.”

“Thank goodness. You gave me a fright,” Zecora said, reaching into her saddlebags, and Lapis couldn’t help but heave a quick sigh of relief. Okay, no brain damage, that’s good. “Here. Drink this, and you’ll soon feel right.”

Lapis took the proffered clay flask and, after a moment’s hesitation, he began to drink from it. The taste was awful - somewhere between banana taffy and burning dust - but after a few mouthfuls, the world stopped spinning every time he blinked. “…Whoa. Much better. Thanks, Zecora.”

“If you wish to thank me, then don’t suffer another fall,” Zecora said, taking the flask back and returning it to her own saddlebags. “Now, tell me what you were doing, if you can recall.”

“Just a second,” Lapis said, sliding the grappling gauntlet off his hoof. For a second or two, he was tempted to throw it through one of the windows, but instead he carefully returned it to his saddlebags. “There were a couple of weird balconies up there. I was able to look over the first one, but getting to the second… didn’t work out.”

Zecora sighed. “I’m surprised that I must explain these things, but high places are best left to ponies with wings.”

“Well, there wasn’t a pegasus here,” Lapis said, frowning, “and I had a way to get up and down. It just…”

“Proved too dangerous. Lapis, you surely must see: the only way to explore here, is carefully,” Zecora said. “If - without gear - a path is unsafe, then you leave and return, no matter how it may chafe.”

“Right, yeah,” Lapis said, shaking the last of the confusion from his head, then pulling the book with the silvered pages from his saddlebag. “Listen, I found a few books up there, and… okay, I’m probably just being paranoid, but I think this one is giving off some major cursed-item vibes. Do you know how to check it over, or something?”

Zecora frowned down at the book, then reached into her own saddlebags. She withdrew a small, simple canvas bag, then carefully sprinkled a small amount of sparkling dust over top of the book. The dust fell toward the cover - then, to Lapis’ surprise, the dust glowed a deep, vivid indigo as it drew within a few inches of the book, floating out to the sides as if it were sliding off an invisible dome.

“No curses are laid upon this tome’s hide,” Zecora pronounced, returning the bag of dust to her saddlebags. “But, there are wards to protect what’s inside.”

“Oh,” Lapis said, frowning. “Thanks.” He stuffed the book back into his saddlebags, and produced the other two. “These were also up on that balcony, though I was only able to make anything of this big one. It’s a record of imports to this castle, from the year…”

“One thousand, six hundred and nineteen,” Zecora said, glancing at the spine of the record book. “A terrible year… And what did you glean?”

“Uh… well, the last shipment recorded in the book came off the HMS Persistence, probably from Griffonstone,” Lapis said. “A lot of steel came in from that boat, and the book mentions it was made with… a Pinion forging method, or something. The thing is, though, the book also mentions a message for some- well, I’m not sure whether they’re a pony or something else, but a message for Gara Pinion was also delivered off that boat. But, wait, what happened in the year 1619?”

“You do not know? It’s anniversary was not past soon,” Zecora said, looking surprised. “On that year fell the banishment of Nightmare Moon. Should the shipment you describe be the last recorded, I expect it was the last before this castle’s splendor ended. Gara Pinion… I fear I cannot say wherefore, but I feel certain I have read the name before.”

“Alright,” Lapis said, snapping the record book shut and turning to the last. “And the other book? It’s about pegasus flying techniques, as far as I can tell.”

Zecora shook her head. “Light reading perhaps, more I cannot tell. You seem unsettled, Lapis. Are you sure you are well?”

“Yeah, mostly,” Lapis said, tucking the books back into his saddlebag. “You find what you were looking for?”

“For one day’s trip, I have found quite enough. Let us be off, to look through all this stuff,” Zecora said, and she started for the castle exit.

Twilight was staring at Pinkie’s chalkboard with a visibly tormented expression. While her brow was furrowed, and her mouth was drawn to a thin, determined line, her unblinking eyes were so wide open that Fluttershy could watch them steadily growing more bloodshot with each passing second.

On one side of the chalkboard, the side that currently faced away from Twilight, was the unicorn’s own hoofwork: an arcane array of curved lines plotted onto graphs. This was accompanied by an imposing block of densely-packed simplification, such that over the course of a long and increasingly sloppy list, a jagged and sharply-outlined exponent, and an initially small add-on with a snaking decimal tail, the numbers plotted on the graph boiled down to a single equation. This final formula then terminated in the number 2872.7467.

And of course, on the side of the chalkboard that was turned to face Twilight, sat Pinkie’s impromptu sketch of a pie’s profile, under which sat the very same number - rounded up to two digits, but otherwise identical. Twilight regarded the number with a stare as cold as thin ice, as if expecting it to reveal some hidden error at any moment, to expose Pinkie’s chalk confection for the nonsense which, by all rights, it should have been.

Pinkie, for her part, was sitting atop Spike’s stool behind the library counter, spinning herself in circles atop the seat of the stool. With every rotation, one of the stool’s wooden legs creaked, and Twilight’s eyelid was twitching in time with the wood’s rhythmic protests.

Fluttershy knew she probably needed to say something. After all, Twilight didn’t seem likely to calm down by herself, and anything that Pinkie said would probably set Twilight off. Fluttershy just couldn’t think of anything to say.

Twilight’s face gave Fluttershy the impression that Twilight was simultaneously on the edges of righteous fury and mindless, shrieking panic. It was an expression that Fluttershy often saw on the faces of baby badgers emerging from their burrows for the first time, who - after spending the whole of their prior lives believing themselves the second-most powerful and dangerous creatures in all their small, dark, and comfortable world - were suddenly confronted with the offensively undeniable sight of an entire adult pegasus, several times bigger than even a very big baby badger.

On baby badgers, this expression would usually turn to a relaxed look of dawning wonder, once they realized that Fluttershy was a friend, and that even she took up only a fraction of the wide, bright world of Equestria. The problem was that Twilight wasn’t a badger. She was much more…

Fluttershy would’ve used the word “determined” if she’d had to explain the difference out loud. After all, saying that somepony was more stubborn than a badger made for very strong words, even if they might be true.

Behind Twilight’s desk, Spike’s stool swiveled as high as it would go. The seat stopped turning with a solid, reverberating thunk, and Pinkie spun off the side of the stool, landing on her hooves and stumbling out from around the corner of the desk with her eyes still spinning in her head. She tripped over her own hooves and careened into the side of the chalkboard, knocking it to the floor with a crash and a billowing cloud of chalk dust.

The cloud of dust set both Twilight and Fluttershy coughing for a few moments. When the dust settled, they both looked up to find Pinkie lying on her back atop the fallen chalkboard, sections of her mane dyed white by the chalk, her diagram almost entirely erased by the collision.

This, luckily, seemed to break whatever trance Twilight had fallen into, because after taking a quick breath, she wasted no time in helping Pinkie onto her hooves. “…I probably should’ve warned you about that stool.”

“Eh, no harm done. I’m just surprised I got as high up as I did,” Pinkie said. “I mean, I knew that stool was for Spike, so I figured it was probably going to get pretty high, but I mean, wow, it really went up there!”

“It came with the library,” Twilight said. “So, I suppose Ponyville must have a history with shorter library assistants. …Anyway, I think I’ve just about wrapped things up, and your mad-”

Twilight paused, her eyelid twitching again, then cleared her throat and took another deep breath. “Sorry. Dust. Your math, is just about perfect.”

“Yippee!” Pinkie said, springing up into the air. “Thanks a bunch, Twilight! I’ll be sure to send you the invitations to Lapis’ Welcome-to-Ponyville-Two-Months-Ago Brunch as soon as I get permission from the mayor!”

“Thanks, Pinkie. I always appreciate…” Twilight trailed off, a frown spreading across her face. “Wait. This is for Lapis’ brunch?”

“Yep, that’s the one!” Pinkie said. “I’ve just about got all the confetti shredded now, and a whole four tables of cupcakes should be ready to serve as soon as tomorrow! All I need is the go-ahead from the Mayor, and the whole show can start!”

Twilight’s eyes widened. She glanced at Fluttershy, who responded with only a small, exhausted nod.

“-Oh,” Twilight muttered, smiling awkwardly. “Um, Pinkie?”

“Uh-huh?” Pinkie asked, standing the chalkboard back up again.

“So, when you and Fluttershy came in here earlier this month, I thought you said you were having a small brunch,” Twilight said.

“Mm-hm!”

“Okay,” Twilight said. “Well, small brunches don’t usually involve covering a two-thousand-eight-hundred-square-hoof area with confetti.”

“Well, that’s because this one isn’t usual.” Pinkie said. “In fact, I’d say it’s downright non-usual!”

“…Right,” Twilight said, with visible effort. “But, Pinkie, we’re trying to show this pony that we’re just normal ponies, remember?”

“Yep!” Pinkie said, bouncing over to the confetti cannon and rolling it back toward the blackboard. “Ya see, nopony’s really normal anyway, because ‘normal’ is the combined average of every pony who’s ever ponied, ever. And nopony is every pony who’s ever ponied, because everypony is their own pony!”

Pinkie wheeled the party cannon behind the blackboard and out of sight, then stepped around it. “So-o, the only way that anypony could ever be a normal pony, would be for that anypony to always be their own pony, just like everypony else! And for me to show that I’m a normal pony, I have to be my own pony - me, Pinkie Pie! And Pinkie Pie would never-never-ever let a two-month-overdue welcome brunch be a regular old welcome brunch. No way!” She turned to face Twilight directly, a wide grin on her face. “You see? This one’s gotta be special! So, I’m gonna go see the Mayor, and then I’ll get you and Fluttershy and everypony else those invitations. Thanks again, Twilight!”

Pinkie stepped behind the blackboard - and then, in a black-and-pink blur, she and the blackboard were through the door and out of sight, Twilight and Fluttershy’s manes ruffling in the wind.

“…Oh my goodness,” Fluttershy eventually said.

“Uh-oh,” Twilight agreed.

“Do you think we can stop her?” Fluttershy asked.

Twilight hesitated, then looked at the space where the chalkboard had been. Twilight knew full well that the party cannon had only just been pushed out of sight behind the blackboard - and yet the fact remained that it was now gone, too, either pushed alongside the chalkboard by Pinkie or else simply vanishing the moment it was out of sight. Twilight remembered how many other times Pinkie had repeated such tricks, either with other objects or with herself; she remembered the existence of the Pinkie Sense, and Pinkie’s near-total lack of fear even inside the Everfree Forest.

“No,” Twilight eventually said. “No, I don’t think we can.”

Fluttershy glanced down at her own hooves, then looked back up at Twilight. "Well... I think that maybe we should try anyway."

Lapis and Zecora rounded a corner on the trail that led out of the Everfree Forest, and Lapis stopped in his tracks, Nikki briefly lurching atop Lapis’ head as Zecora continued ahead.

It was the same place in the path where Lapis had hesitated while entering the forest, a small stretch of space where the dirt trail grew wider, a single ray of sunshine piercing the emerald canopy to strike the center of the stretched clearing. On the one hand, Lapis knew where this spot was, and that meant they were almost out of the Everfree, which was good news.

On the other hand…

“Again, I see new length to your face,” Zecora said, turning to look at Lapis from a few steps ahead, a faint line of concern furrowing her brow. “Why now, as before, did you stop in this place?”

“This is where I woke up,” Lapis mumbled, staring at the patch of sunlight on the dusty earth of the trail. “Two months ago. One second, I was walking through the library at my university, and the next, I was… here. In the Everfree.”

In Equestria. And now here I am, two months and four near-death experiences later, no closer to going back home.

Zecora didn’t speak, instead turning to look at the patch of earth where Lapis was staring. She blinked, and when her eyelids opened, her eyes were utterly engulfed by an eerie yellow glow. For a split second, she looked at the patch of sunlight- then her gaze snapped up and to the side, locking onto a patch of shadow on the opposite side of the clearing.

“What is it?” Lapis asked.

Again, Zecora didn’t respond, not taking her eyes off the patch of shadow. Her ears twitched, and her lips moved as if she were speaking, but she made no sound.

“Hey,” Lapis said, more loudly. “Hello? Zecora? Kinda freaking me out, here.”

Zecora’s lips stopped moving. She remained silent for a few more seconds, then blinked again, her eyes returning to normal. “…Nothing. For your fright, I am sorry. I simply meant to check if there was something I could see.”

“Okay, well, did you see anything?” Lapis asked. “A portal, a magic scar, a runic circle, anything like that?”

Zecora shook her head. “No. Nothing there, at least not to my eyes. Though only for the spirit realm, is my vision made wise.”

Lapis sighed, then he grimaced and flicked his ears back upright atop his head. “Thanks anyway. It means a lot that you tried. I was just… really hoping that the library would have something to help.” He started after Zecora, who resumed walking down the path once he caught up.

“…A record book, a guide to flight. Though unhelpful, not the worst,” Zecora said, after a few moments. “Have you tried at all to check the tome, that you thought might be cursed?”

“Oh, that one?” Lapis asked, and after a rummaging around for a second or two, he pulled it free from his bag, pulled it open, and began flipping through the pages. “Well, that’s the thing. Even if there were wards on it, it doesn’t seem like there’s anything in here to protect but paper. There’s only three sentences in the whole book, and they’re right… here.”

Lapis turned the book around, presenting the page with the cryptic question to Zecora. However, instead of providing an explanation, the zebra only frowned. “…For this question, please forgive me, but what am I meant to see?”

“Uh, yeah.” Lapis walked over to stand next to Zecora, tracing the lines of the book with his hoof. “There’s a couple of lines right here, like a poem or riddle or something-” Lapis cut himself off, blushing as an explanation occurred to him. “…Oh, can you not read the language?”

Zecora chuckled, then shook her head. “For Equuish spoken and written, my knowledge is true. No, if something is written there…” She tapped the page with her hoof, then turned to look Lapis right in the face.

“It is written there for you,” Zecora said. And though the small smile on her face was gentle and reassuring, there seemed to be a faint, almost perfectly-hidden melancholy in the slight furrow of her brow.

Lapis’ eyes widened, and he felt his stomach drop away within his gut. He took a slow, deep breath, then carefully returned the book to his saddlebags. “…How worried should I be?”

“For now? Only a little, I believe,” Zecora said, chuckling and starting back down the path. “The words of the tome are meant more to test than deceive. But, should you seek more within, beware of a cost - in seeking truths so well-guarded, there is much to be lost.”

“…How sure are you that this book isn’t cursed?” Lapis asked, following behind her.

A few hours later, Princess Celestia stepped into her sister’s chambers to find her grumbling by the window. “…eons spent dreaming with the shamans, year after year of ‘the waking mind, so sure yet frail, can never see behind the veil.’ For one millennium we are indisposed, one, and- Ah, Sister!”

“Luna,” Celestia said, smiling. “I came as soon as I heard you’d returned. Tell me, how was your excursion?”

Luna sighed, then looked back out the window at the skyline of Canterlot, her starry mane swirling in the breeze. “More complex than we had hoped. This unicorn continues to prove himself difficult.”

“The one who the Nightmare sought?” Princess Celestia asked, glancing briefly at a corner of the room. There, beside the window, sat a half-completed painting of a cavern of pale stone, shadows full of teeth and numerous legs silhouetted by glowing green crystals.

“Yes,” Luna muttered. “And still, we cannot aid him, for through some sheer stroke of ill fortune, he always awakes before we can approach him. We would suspect him a Dreamwalker, but for the lack of any wards upon his mind.”

“And did you not try approaching him directly,” Princess Celestia asked, walking over to stand beside her sister, “when he was already awake?”

“Such was our intent, Sister,” Princess Luna said, and her ears half-folded back as her tone grew less frustrated, more somber. “But as we found him, he was… setting hoof into the remnants of our original capital.”

Celestia’s gentle smile faded from her face. “I see.”

She sat beside Luna, and again unfurled her wing, draping it over the smaller alicorn like a blanket. Luna half-chuckled, leaning into Celestia’s side. “It was not so bad as that, Sister.”

“And yet it troubled you enough that you didn’t approach him directly,” Princess Celestia said. “I’m sorry you had to see that place again, Luna.”

“We meant to make the wiser choice,” Luna said, her voice carefully steady. “We meant to learn what he was doing, and save making contact for another time. We peered into his mind while he was within the castle. Only once, whilst he was standing in Gara’s old perch. Can you guess what he was thinking, Sister?”

Celestia remained silent.

“He was mourning,” Luna said. “Never before had he seen our capital, nor the library when it was not a tomb, and yet he mourned for how he thought it had been. He had some… antiquated ideas concerning the use of oil lanterns…”

Luna fell silent for a time, and Celestia remained by her side, keeping her wing draped across Luna’s barrel as they stared out the window.

“And did you leave?” Celestia asked.

Luna sniffled. “Nay. We did something rather foalish, instead. …He is in no danger from us-”

“I never worried,” Celestia firmly said, “that he was.”

“Of course,” Luna said, and yet she relaxed, just slightly. “After that and a magical accident, nothing of interest transpired until they entered the Everfree. There, among other things, we learnt that shamans have discovered how to see into the spirit realm whilst awake.” Luna’s eyes narrowed in faint annoyance, and her mouth scrunched just slightly. “Without telling us. A lucky thing they remember the art of discreet speech, else we may have been caught in a rather awkward situation.”

Princess Celestia chuckled. “Don’t pout, sister. I’m sure you’ll have it figured out in no time.”

Luna didn’t speak for another few moments, simply looking around her own room at the black walls, the gleaming silver trim and the deep indigo sheets upon her own bed.

“…Sister,” Luna said. “We seek thy honest opinion.”

“On what?” Princess Celestia asked, cocking an eyebrow.

“Our taste in decoration,” Luna said, gesturing around the room with a brief sweep of her hoof. “Answer us truly: does it have ‘major cursed-item vibes?’”

Author's Note

Patch Notes:
- �� p�nc�k�s, th� �� t� �� p�str�ph�. �� Pinkie ��e�. (Venerable Ro, Pinklestia, Winter Star, INeedSleep)
- During the dream sequence, Lapis retreats before a wave of buts, rather than bugs. This is because some leaf-lover thought it would be a fun time to invite the Glyphids to debate club, without teaching them about "yes, and" first. Generous application of high-velocity lead was sufficient to resolve the issue.

And now that that's taken care of: hey, and welcome to the second chapter of the week! With this, Luna is now officially in play, though the specifics of what she's up to will of course not be revealed until later.

First off - wow, I always forget how fast all of you read until I actually post a chapter! I've been reading your comments, just had a slightly busy Friday, so to address some common threads and my personal favorites - yes, Big Mac is a chess genius, because there are very few things that can teach the value of long-term planning better than a farm; Peter Pumpkin Pie by ThatGuyTookMyUsername is now canon; wouldn't you like to know; and of course, FOR KARL!

Second, for those of you who don't read my blog - last Friday, when I meant to upload two chapters at once for fun, there was an unfortunate and highly technical incident involving my laptop, a concrete floor, and the Earth's gravitational pull. This is more inconvenient than usual, considering that the laptop in question is already my backup laptop to begin with, and my main device is currently waiting for a warranty to become valid. Backup is fixed, main won't be up and running until later, no biggie.

And finally, in regards to Lapis and the CMC - between the fact that Apple Bloom strongly reminds him of his sister, and the fact that Lapis knows just enough nothing about the show to think of the CMC's antics in the same vein as a weather phenomenon (where if you leave the window open while it's raining, and something important gets rained on, then that's your fault), Lapis is definitely biased in favor of the three little troublemakers. I originally planned to have Fluttershy and Pinkie walk in on Twilight hosting a lecture on the dangers of playing with magical tools for Miss Cheerilee's whole class, but at the end of the day it really threw a wrench in the whole reveal-Pinkie's-depth-of-commitment thing.

(And for those who are really curious about the technical details, so did Scrivener's Copy as BBCode function. It copies the italics into BBCode, alright, but do you know what it doesn�t copy?)

Anyway, that's all for now. 'Till the next one!

The Pinkening

Lapis Print opened his eyes.

He was still lying in bed. It was almost dark outside, so his bedroom was cast in a kind of half-shadow. Everything was exactly as Lapis had left it the morning before, save for the large, narrow wooden wardrobe that had tucked itself into the corner of the room.

Lapis grimaced, then rolled out of bed and trotted out of the room. “It’s rude to watch ponies while they’re sleeping,” he said over his shoulder.

The mimic, of course, didn’t respond. It had taken to staying inside Lapis’ home, for reasons he wasn’t quite able to discern. He’d tried to communicate with it already, designating the mimic’s presence on one side of the room to mean “yes” and the other side to mean “no,” then trying to play a game of twenty questions that way. The mimic, rather than responding, had simply reverted to a chest and remained directly in front of Lapis until he gave up communication as a lost cause. Nikki seemed to trust the mimic, though, and Lapis trusted her.

Shower, coffee, cook. It was still cloudy when Lapis stepped into his living room, and hardly any ponies were out and about yet. He sat at the table, picked up the trio of books he’d taken from the Castle of the Two Sisters, and idly began flipping through the record book as he ate his breakfast, skimming over line after line of goods received without understanding a single one of them. Nikki flew into the room a moment later, settling atop Lapis’ head, and he briefly paused to boop her beak before continuing to read.

This wasn’t the book Lapis needed to work with, and he knew it. That book, the dark one with the silvered pages, was sitting atop Lapis’ counter. He knew Zecora had checked it over for curses and found none, and since he’d brought it home, it had behaved exactly as an ordinary - if blank - book should. Lapis knew he should pick it up and work on the riddle, but every time he considered the idea, he remembered the look of subtle melancholy on Zecora’s face and was overcome with a creeping dread.

And… well, it could’ve been a trick of Lapis’ mind, but somehow, the book seemed to be waiting for him atop that counter, with an air of patient expectancy that made it feel more animate than the real living object in his home.

I need to do it, Lapis thought. Time is running out. Luna’s going to get suspicious sooner or later, and the longer I go without getting home, the greater the chance that I’ll irreparably mess up the timeline. I need to open that book.

Lapis finished his breakfast, then slowly, deliberately set down his fork and knife-

The sound of galloping hooves interrupted Lapis’ train of thought, just as he levitated the book an inch above the counter. A second later, his front door burst open, and Nikki flapped her wings in surprise as Lyra fell through the door in a rush, nearly faceplanting into the floor.

“Lyra?” Lapis asked, getting up from his seat. “What’s the matter-”

“Nothing!” Lyra yelped, quickly staggering upright. “Nothing’s the matter, I just wanted to check in on you. …Um, hi!”

“Hi,” Lapis said, cocking an eyebrow. “Lyra, for real, you look like you galloped all the way here. What’s going on?”

“Um,” Lyra said, her eyes going wide as she glanced over Lapis’ shoulder. “Well, I saw that you were out for the day yesterday, and I thought that, y’know, with how bad it was the last time you left Ponyville, I’d better make sure you were okay.”

“Oh,” Lapis said. “Uh, yeah, I’m doing alright. I went on a little research trip. Zecora was with me basically the whole time, and I found a few weird books.” Lapis looked over the visibly-nervous Lyra, and hesitated a moment before speaking. “…I made some coffee, if you want any.”

Lyra frowned. “Oh, thanks, but I really couldn’t. I’ve already had plenty. …So, no more Harmonic Cascades recently?”

“Nope,” Lapis said, frowning as he took his seat. “Actually, I’ve been meaning to ask you about that. Where’d you come up with the idea of ‘channeling’ them?”

“Oh, that? It was my aunt. She read it from some book, and it basically solved the problem for her,” Lyra said, waving a hoof. “So… have you channeled any other Cascades since then?”

“Uh, no,” Lapis said, briefly glancing up to Nikki, who seemed just as confused as he was. “Like I said, things have mostly been pretty quiet.”

“Right, right,” Lyra said, nodding. “But you do remember how to channel a Cascade, right? Just give it more specific instructions before the waves start happening?”

“Yeah, I remember,” Lapis said, his brow slowly furrowing. “Lyra?”

Lyra’s eyes snapped wide open, and she glanced to the side. “…Lapis?”

“What is going on?” Lapis asked, staring Lyra directly in the eyes.

Lyra flinched, her ears flopping back, then sighed and met Lapis’ gaze. “…Okay, so-”

Then, Lyra’s gaze briefly flicked over Lapis’ shoulder, and an expression that was something like terror flashed across her face before she kept looking back at Lapis. “-I can’t tell you, Lapis.”

“What do you mean, ‘you can’t tell me?’” Lapis asked, a weight of dread beginning to settle in his gut.

“I- I want to tell you, I do, but I just- I can’t, Lapis. I’m sorry,” Lyra stammered, trying and failing to hold Lapis’ gaze as she backed toward the door. “Just- just remember, everything will be okay, alright? It’ll be okay. I’m sorry, I’ve got to- I’m sorry!”

Lapis opened his mouth to say something, but before he got the chance, Lyra was gone out the door, the sound of her galloping hooves fading out of earshot as rapidly as they’d approached. Bewildered, Lapis glanced over his shoulder, toward where Lyra had kept glancing, and for a second he thought he saw a flash of pink from somewhere near the portrait of the mustached griffon. Then he blinked, and there was nothing there, the painted griffon meeting Lapis’ befuddled gaze with unchanging smugness.

Lapis looked over to Nikki, who looked to him at exactly the same moment, her expression as unsettled as his.

“…What the fuck?” Lapis asked. “No, seriously, what the fuck was that?”

Nikki shrugged, and so Lapis found himself with no options but to down the last of his coffee and get ready for another day of work. He briefly contemplated staying inside all day, hoping that whatever was about to happen would pass him by, but eventually decided that there was no point.

It didn’t stop the Parasprites, Lapis thought, as he slung his saddlebags across his back, then looked to the front door and set his jaw. And it won’t stop this, either, whatever it is. Nothing to do but deal with it.

Lapis hesitated, then briefly dug into his saddlebags, checking that the grappling gauntlet was still there - which it was. Then, he walked out the door and into Ponyville.

At the same moment that Lapis walked through the door, Fluttershy and Twilight were heading toward Sugarcube Corner at a quick trot. Both of them appeared nervous, though Twilight’s nervous expression seemed a lot less comfortable on her face than Fluttershy’s.

“Alright, Fluttershy,” Twilight said. “Let’s go over the plan one more time. What’s step one?”

“Um…” Fluttershy said. “I think I need to go inside, find Pinkie, and ask her to stop.”

“Right,” Twilight said, nodding. “And while you do that, I cast as many slowing and shielding spells around Sugarcube Corner as I can.”

“Are we sure that’s not too much, Twilight?” Fluttershy asked, her ears flicking slightly back. “She’s certainly going overboard, but she’s still our friend, Twilight.”

“We’ve already tried everything else, Fluttershy,” Twilight said, her own ears flicking back as the worried expression on her face intensified. “I’m not a big fan of this idea either, but I just don’t know whether anything else will work. Besides, Pinkie’s going more than just overboard. Did you read the invitation from this morning?”

“I might’ve skimmed it a little,” Fluttershy said, glancing to the side.

“It’s not just a brunch party now,” Twilight said, hurrying a little ahead and glancing over her shoulder at Fluttershy. “It’s a surprise brunch party.”

“Oh,” Fluttershy said, her eyes widening as she realized exactly how much she, herself, would never, ever like to be subjected to a surprise party involving everypony in Ponyville. “Oh my.”

“Precisely,” Twilight said, turning her gaze to the road ahead. “I’ll admit, I do appreciate the strategy of ambushing a pony who gallops away if they see you coming. But this really isn’t the right way to demonstrate that you, me, and our friends are normal, trustworthy ponies who don’t need to be galloped away from in the first place!”

Fluttershy kept silent, glancing off to the side.

“…What?” Twilight asked. “Don’t tell me you think Pinkie has the right idea?”

“Oh, no, not at all,” Fluttershy said, shaking her head. “I just really don’t see why you and Pinkie are so keen on meeting this pony in the first place. There are a lot of ponies in Ponyville that I’ve never talked to, and… well, I guess I’d like to see if his pigeon friend is doing okay, but I really don’t think we have to throw a whole party just to talk to him. Why don’t we just visit his house?”

Twilight grimaced. “We’ve tried. Multiple times. He’s never there.”

“…Well, have you tried just waiting by his door?” Fluttershy asked.

Twilight froze in her tracks, then sighed. “No, no we haven’t. But at this point, it’s really too late, because Pinkie is going to throw this party regardless of whether or not she should, and I still haven’t apologized to this pony face-to-face for setting the Parasprites on Ponyville, or for accidentally dropping him off the water tower!”

“Oh,” Fluttershy said, her eyes widening. “Well, I might not have known about the water tower.”

“Don’t worry, Fluttershy!” Pinkie chirped. “It’s already on a banner!”

Fluttershy and Twilight both froze, then turned toward the source of the voice. Somehow, Pinkie had started bouncing along beside them, and neither of them had noticed - only now that Pinkie had decided to speak did they realize their original topic of conversation could now overhear their every word.

“…Hey, Pinkie Pie!” Twilight began, smiling awkwardly. “So, uh… Fluttershy and I were talking, and we’re really not sure that a surprise party is the way to go. Right, Fluttershy?”

“Um, yes,” Fluttershy said. “Of course, we do know you’re the party expert-”

“The premier party pony, out of every party pony who’s ever partied,” Pinkie said, raising her hoof to her chest.

“Yes, that,” Fluttershy said. “We’re just worried that, um, this Lapis pony won’t care for being surprised, especially not by the ponies he might be trying to steer clear of.”

Pinkie slowly nodded, then a smile spread across her face. “Not to worry, Fluttershy. I’ve been thinking the same thing, and I totally understand!”

Fluttershy and Twilight exchanged an incredulous look, then turned to Pinkie and spoke together. “You do?”

“Absolutely,” Pinkie said. “That’s why I’m making it a brunch, like you said! That way, it won’t be a party, so there’s no way he won’t like it!”

“…Oh,” Fluttershy said, her ears flopping back.

Beside Fluttershy, Twilight sighed, then stepped around behind Pinkie and ignited her horn. Fluttershy frowned in confusion, then her eyes widened as Twilight made a frantic ‘keep-talking’ sort of gesture.

Luckily, Pinkie was already inclined to start talking. “I’ve actually been up all night getting it ready. Did you know you can make coffee cake with extra espresso? Because I didn’t, but wow, I’m really glad I learned, because otherwise it would’ve taken hours to get the liquid propane burner up to temperature!”

Behind Pinkie, Twilight strained, and a purple bubble began to fade into existence around Twilight, Fluttershy, and Pinkie. Fluttershy frowned, then raised a hoof. “Um, Pinkie, how long has it been since you’ve slept?”

Pinkie shrugged, and made an ‘I-don’t-know’ sort of grunt. “When was the last time it was cloudy? Anyway, I’ve already got just about everything set up, so now the only thing left to do is to make sure that nopony spoils the surprise before ten twenty-four exactly, when everypony will show up at the Corner Cafe!”

Twilight grunted, and a flash of light began to wash down from the top of the bubble toward the edges.

Pinkie paused, then gasped, clutching her hooves to her face. “Oh no! I forgot to move the muffins! Gotta go - see you two there!”

“Pinkie, wait!” Fluttershy said, but Pinkie was already gone, zipping out through the bubble just before the flash of light hit the ground - and as it did, there was a chime like a bell, and Twilight’s shield bubble thickened and solidified.

“…Did I get her?” Twilight asked, swaying in place a little as she opened her eyes.

Fluttershy didn’t answer, walking over to the side of the bubble and knocking her hoof against the shield bubble. It made a worryingly solid clunk, and it felt as hard as glass. “Um, no.”

Twilight groaned. “Oh, come on! That was the fastest I’ve ever cast a shielding spell - at this rate, I don’t even think the Princess could catch Pinkie!”

“Twilight?” Fluttershy asked.

Twilight huffed, then stared down at the ground, tapping her hoof against her chin. “Alright, let me think. It should be 7:38 now, which means we have two hours and forty-six minutes before the surprise party starts. If Pinkie’s currently trying to stop anypony from spoiling the surprise, then if we find Lapis, and try to tell him, then Pinkie will come to us. Once that happens, I can set a Sticky-Hooves Snare in the surrounding area, catch Pinkie, and try to talk her down.”

“Um, Twilight.”

“While that’s happening, somepony will need to find out where Pinkie’s hot air balloon is, and disable it if necessary,” Twilight continued. “Damaging the balloon would of course be less than ideal, but if something does happen, then I might be able to write it off as a peacekeeping expense-”

“Twilight!” Fluttershy said, placing a hoof on Twilight’s shoulder. “I’m sorry to interrupt, but… around when will the shield go away?”

“The what?” Twilight asked, looking up. She glanced around, and her ears flopped back as she took in the shield. “…Oh. This should last for, uh… a little less than three hours.”

“Oh, okay,” Fluttershy said, removing her hoof from Twilight’s shoulder and glancing around the dome. “Um, just out of curiosity, is there any way you could bring it down?”

“…No,” Twilight said, lowering her head. “I could teleport us both out, but teleporting another pony along with myself would take a lot more magic than a normal teleportation spell. Even if I didn’t instantly pass out, I’d pretty much be running on fumes.”

There followed a moment of silence.

“…So, um,” Fluttershy said. “Does that mean we can’t stop Pinkie?”

“Yes,” Twilight sighed. “Unless this bubble pops early, which it probably won’t.”

“Oh,” Fluttershy said, glancing nervously around. “Oh my.”

Lapis had been at work for a few hours now, repairing lawn chairs and fences with Nikki perched atop his head. Though he hadn’t figured out what Lyra’s warning was about, he was almost positive something big was going on.

For one thing, it seemed like there was a lot more scaffolding in Ponyville than usual. It felt like every other alley he looked at had been partially filled with an impenetrable, ramshackle jumble of nailed-together planks, poles, and tarps, enough that he wondered whether Mayor Mare had ordered a town-wide renovation. If she had, though, it seemed like she hadn’t assigned enough ponies to the job, because there didn’t seem to be anypony at work.

Maybe it’s just the setup for the renovation? Lapis thought, as he started making his way back toward his workshop. Why is all the scaffolding so tall, anyway? Are they finally replacing the thatch or something?

Lapis rounded a corner, then approached a group of ponies who were all pushing covered strollers, chatting animatedly to each other. As Lapis approached, however, the small group abruptly fell silent, every one of their number suddenly finding something else to do - some peeked beneath the blankets of their strollers, others glanced upward as if they’d just felt a raindrop, and one lemon-yellow pegasus stallion in a hard hat began to whistle a cheerful tune.

…Okay then, Lapis thought, then continued on his way. Nikki doesn’t usually ride directly on top of my head, so I guess that might be weird if you aren’t expecting it. Is it really that weird to have an animal around, though?

Oh, wait. It’s the gray streak in my mane, it looks like Nikki… yep, that explains it. Lapis snickered, then kept heading down the road. Honestly, at this point, he was starting to expect that whatever Lyra had going on, it was going to happen tomorrow - he’d gotten through half the items on his request board already, and was heading to his house to pick up the remaining half now.

Hey, who knows? Maybe I burned through my bad luck with that accident in the Two Sisters’ Castle, and now I’m finally catching a stretch of good- nope, don’t think that, you’ll jinx it. Lapis rounded a corner and started down a stretch of Cantering Boulevard, noticing as he did so that there were a pair of pegasi hanging some kind of banner over one of the storefronts - actually, that’s not too far from the Corner Cafe. Huh.

Lapis paused momentarily to glance at the banner, just as the two pegasi lowered a tarp over it. He only caught a flash of the bottom-right corner, where the letters “RINT” were dyed in deep blue atop cream-colored cloth. Then, the pegasi took off, and Lapis turned and resumed his route toward his house, passing by another crowd of ponies with strollers.

…Wow, I don’t think there’s a single pony in that crowd who doesn’t have a stroller, Lapis thought, glancing over the group of ponies. Must be take-your-kid-to-work-day, or something.

As Lapis neared the end of the crowd, one of the ponies- oh hey, it’s Derpy! -tripped over her own hooves, and as she jostled the stroller with her stumbling, the patchwork quilt covering her stroller shifted for just a second or two, just long enough for Lapis to see a trio of round, brightly-colored shapes underneath. Wait, what?

Why does Derpy have a stroller full of balloons?

Derpy Hooves quickly repositioned the blanket over her stroller, but even still, Lapis could make out the bulges where the balloons pressed against the fabric. Then, as Derpy rejoined the crowd, Lapis realized - it wasn’t just Derpy Hooves. Every blanketed stroller, every single one, showed the signature bulges of three or more balloons.

“You seeing this?” Lapis muttered, glancing up at Nikki, who seemed just as confused as he did. Lapis briefly considered following along after the herd of ponies, then decided against it. Probably just one more day in Ponyville.

…Probably.

As Lapis turned the corner that would normally take him back toward the street his home was on, he found his way blocked by a wide, white sign set atop a red-and-white-striped wooden stand. Inscribed on the sign in large, official lettering was the word ‘DETOUR,’ and on the other side of the sign, the road was entirely blocked off by a jumble of tarps, tools, traffic cones, and yellow tape, all clustered together so thickly that he couldn’t see through to the other side. Welp, guess I’m taking a detour.

Lapis briefly consulted his mental map of Ponyville - then, just as he turned to start down his new route, a Earth-pony mare with a brown coat emerged from one of the tents, wheeling what looked like some sort of wooden cannon. It was painted a bright pastel blue, and its solid, smoothly-turning wheels were a deep, dark purple, edged with bright pink and adorned by the image of a daisy. The Earth-pony made it five steps out of the tent before she caught sight of Lapis, and for a second she froze - then, just as casually as she’d emerged from the tent, she backed up back into it, pulling the cannon out of sight before her.

Lapis frowned, then set off down his usual route at a quick trot. Okay, what’s with the cannon? Normally, the only pony who has one of those is Pinkie, and she just uses them for confetti. …Whatever, I’m sure it’s fine, even if that mare’s reaction to me was a bit off.

“Hey, Nikki?” Lapis asked, as he rounded another corner and began trotting down a side street. It was crowded here, just crowded enough that Lapis was forced to bob and weave between ponies. “So, weird question. There aren’t any more gray streaks in my mane than usual, right?”

Nikki scowled down at Lapis, then cuffed his ear for good measure. Lapis winced, then sighed. “Yeah, I earned that one. Just thought I’d ask-”

From somewhere off in the distance, there came a faint, distinct pop, and Lapis started, looking straight ahead - then groaned, as he saw another wall of DETOUR signs blocking his path. “Wow, two for two. Uh, hey, Nikki, could you maybe fly up and see if there’s any way back to my workshop?”

Nikki rolled her eyes, then took off, Lapis wincing as she cuffed his ear again. Yep, she’s mad. I’ll definitely need to buy a bag of birdseed or some…thing…

Wait a minute, didn’t I see that pony two minutes ago? Standing a few feet away from Lapis, idly inspecting the roadblocks, was the same lemon-yellow pegasus with a hard hat, still whistling the same cheerful tune as before.

Lapis frowned, looking around, and slowly began to realize - he’d seen all the ponies nearby a minute ago. They’d been the first bunch with strollers, except now all their strollers were gone. What the fuck? What’re they all doing here?

At this point, Lapis was beginning to feel prickles running up his spine, as if a group of invisible spiders were scrambling up his back toward his head. This impression was, thankfully, just Lapis’ own unease - there was only one invisible spider on Lapis’ body just then, and it was too busy rappelling to the ground to bother with any such nonsense as climbing to Lapis’ head. The spider narrowly avoided being crushed beneath Lapis’ hoof as he turned and headed away from the yellow pegasus, back toward Cantering Boulevard. Hopefully, if I get out of town, I can find a good vantage point to scope out what’s going on…

Lapis hazarded a glance over his shoulder, and found that the crowd of ponies behind him seemed to have gotten the exact same idea - they, too, were now heading back toward Cantering Boulevard at almost exactly the same speed as Lapis. Lapis briefly made eye contact with the yellow pegasus in the hard hat, and the pegasus’ eyes widened briefly before a look of forced calm came over his face.

Grimacing, Lapis turned back toward Cantering Boulevard and picked up his pace, just a little. He heard a muffled series of exclamations, and turned back to see that the crowd of other ponies were now matching his pace. The yellow pegasus attempted to start casually whistling again, but could only manage a strangled series of puffing noises.

Lapis’ eyes widened, and he snapped his gaze forward. Slowly, gradually, he switched into a trot. And slowly, gradually, the crowd of ponies behind him sped up.

Lapis broke into a canter. So did the crowd.

And then, without being entirely sure when he’d started, Lapis was galloping down Cantering Boulevard at top speed, the crowd of ponies chasing after him. He slipped and nearly fell over as he rounded the corner, glancing around the street for any alley he might duck into - but all of them, every single one, was blocked off by scaffolding. Lapis had no choice but to continue forward, so he did, galloping toward the center of town.

Over the clatter of galloping hooves, Lapis almost didn’t hear the trill from beside his ear. He looked over in time to see Nikki swoop down, then turn down one of the open main roads. Lapis gritted his teeth, his lungs already burning, then followed after her, onto a road that was solidly walled off by multiple nailed-together DETOUR signs.

Lapis skidded to a stop just before ramming into one of the signs, then stared up at Nikki as she flew over the top of the signs. What?! I can’t get over this! Even if I used the gauntlet, I’d wind up stuck in somepony’s roof!

Lapis heard the thunder of hooves rounding the corner, and glanced frantically around for an escape. He spotted a single open alleyway next to an awning, and darted down it at top speed, his hooves splashing in a thin layer of slick mud. Nikki caught up with Lapis a few seconds later, flying just ahead, guiding him through a series of shadowed alleyways until he emerged into-

Lapis skidded to a stop, his eyes wide, his ears folding back, his jaw dropping as he saw what he’d galloped into. He was right in front of the Corner Cafe, standing in front of a crowd of ponies bearing strollers, who had all turned to look at him with mingled surprise and expectation.

“NOW!” came the high-pitched command, and every pony in the street except Lapis moved at once, the rush of air drowned out by the gut-rattling boom of a dozen party cannons, which were then cut off by a choir of party horns. The tarps were pulled off the banners, and the blankets off the strollers, freeing dozens of brightly-colored balloons. The cloud of balloons floated up, rising past the banners that proclaimed “WELCOME TO PONYVILLE LAPIS PRINT,” through the swirling, hissing rain of confetti, and upward still to join the massive hot air balloon parked above the Corner Cafe - which, Lapis realized with a jolt, had been painted to form a cross-eyed but color-accurate depiction of his own head, complete with a sewn-on mane and ears.

Lapis gaped at the hot air balloon for only a second or two, before the sound of two sets of galloping hooves snapped his attention back to earth. He looked down to see Twilight Sparkle and Fluttershy galloping onto the street from the side, looking almost as horrified as Lapis felt. Then, the bell above the door to the Corner Cafe jingled, and Lapis’ gaze snapped over just in time to spot Rainbow Dash casually swooping through the door, shortly followed by a bemused Rarity and a startled-looking Applejack.

Lapis saw a bubblegum-pink blur from the corner of his eye, and he barely had time to flinch before he was skidding across the dirt on his back, pinned down by the twin weights that pressed his shoulders into the ground. Even as he slid to a stop with his eyelids jammed firmly shut, Lapis already knew full well who he was about to see, who he’d been slowly resigning himself to confront for the past two weeks, which pony was the only possible explanation for this pastel-hued, sanity-popping debacle.

And, when Lapis opened his eyes, he wasn’t surprised by the baby-blue eyes that stared into his from only a few inches away, nor by the raw, manic intensity of the joy contained within their slightly bloodshot gaze. No, what really caught him off-guard was their innocence - the complete, utter, and total lack of any vindictive triumph or sadistic glee. This pony had gone through hours, days, weeks of preparation, orchestrated a spectacle in Lapis’ name that could be seen and heard from anywhere within miles of Ponyville, and concluded it by tackling him to the street… with the genuine, wholehearted belief that it would make him happy.

“Sur-priiiise!” said Pinkie Pie.

Fluttershy felt her ears flopping back atop her head as Pinkie climbed off of Lapis Print, already launching into the familiar full-throttle ramble. “Hi, I’m Pinkie Pie, and I threw this brunch party just for you! Were you surprised? Were ya? Huh, huh, huh?”

Lapis rolled back onto his hooves and stood up, and Fluttershy’s eyes widened in surprise - instead of the reactions she’d been expecting, which were everywhere in between screaming terror and screaming anger, Lapis’ face just looked… defeated. He hardly seemed to notice Nikki the pigeon landing atop his head, perching just above his horn. “Uh, yep, you got me. Good job, I really like the… uh, balloon.”

Off to Fluttershy’s left, Twilight glanced up at Pinkie’s retrofitted hot air balloon, which was smiling down over the lot of them with a distinctly cross-eyed gaze.

“I knew you would,” Pinkie said, starting to bounce in circles around the visibly-exhausted unicorn. “I had to do something super-duper-looper-special for you, since I wasn’t able to throw you a Welcome-to-Ponyville party for two whole months! But now you’re here, and most of Ponyville is here, and we can all officially get this party- I mean, this brunch started!”

Lapis frowned. “Brunch?”

“Oh, right,” Pinkie said. She darted past Twilight and over to Fluttershy, who let out a startled eep and spread her wings for balance as Pinkie shoved her up to Lapis.

“See, I was going to make this a whole party,” Pinkie said, stepping out from behind Fluttershy even as she slung a hoof over the pegasus’ shoulder, “and pull out all the stops. Hire a band, arrange a fireworks show, invite the Princesses, y’know, the works! But my friend here, Fluttershy, was worried you wouldn’t like a really big party like that, and she kinda kinda made a super-good case for it, too! So instead, we’re just going to have something a little more low-key - a nice, casual brunch with everypony in Ponyville!”

Pinkie threw her hooves wide, and another party cannon went off with a gut-rattling boom, raining confetti down atop Lapis, Pinkie, and Fluttershy. “Isn’t that great?”

“Um, hello,” Fluttershy said.

Lapis Print kept silent, his ears twitching briefly backward before jerking straight up and forward. “Oh, yeah, it’s just wonderful-”

Oh dear. Fluttershy looked away, her ears flopping backward, and Lapis cut himself off. “…It’s great, yeah. Thanks, Pinkie. And, uh, hey, Fluttershy.”

The pigeon atop Lapis’ head scowled, then cuffed one of his ears with her wing as Twilight approached, an awkward smile splitting her face. “Hi! It’s Lapis, right? Lapis Print?”

“That’d be me,” Lapis said.

“I’m Twilight, another one of Pinkie’s friends,” Twilight said, gesturing to Pinkie Pie. “Could I borrow her for just a second, please?”

Pinkie glanced over at Twilight, confused, and Lapis looked between the two of them for a moment before shrugging, opening his mouth to reply just as Pinkie cut him off. “Don’t worry, Twilight, there’ll be plenty of time for you to apologize for the water tower inside- Ooh! That’s right, the apple muffins are still warm! Let’s take this inside quick, before they cool off!”

“Pinkie!” Twilight began, but Pinkie was already towing Lapis into the Corner Cafe, Rarity and Applejeck quickly stepping out of the way as the brunch’s orchestrator pulled her victim inside.

Twilight facehoofed, then looked up as Rainbow Dash began speaking. “Uh, hey, is it just me, or did Bluey McPigeonhead seem a little less than thrilled about all of Pinkie’s hard work?”

Applejack sighed. “Rainbow Dash, not everypony wants to see their own face on a hot air balloon.”

“On that, I can most certainly agree,” Rarity said, and Fluttershy hummed her agreement. “Not to devalue Pinkie’s labor, but I’m frankly a little startled that she didn’t seek out any review before committing to this kind of spectacle.”

Twilight huffed. “Fluttershy and I have been trying to talk her down to something manageable for nearly two weeks. She barely listened to a word we said.”

“Oh,” Rarity said, her eyes widening in surprise. “Well, Twilight, dear, why didn’t you tell the rest of us? I know I most certainly would’ve been happy to, ah… help mitigate a few things.” She glanced toward the hot air balloon, quickly hiding a grimace from its unblinking, cross-eyed stare.

“I don’t know,” Twilight groaned. “I just… After dragging Rainbow Dash into all this a few days ago and chatting with Applejack, I got worried I was making too much of a mess about Lapis. I guess I didn’t want to make him into a whole thing again.”

Applejack glanced off to the side and grimaced, and Rainbow Dash cocked an eyebrow up at the hot air balloon, then stifled a snicker. “Uh, yeah. Nice work, Twilight.”

Twilight shot Rainbow Dash a flat stare, and Fluttershy raised a hoof. “Um, does anypony else think that we should maybe go inside? It’s just that right now, the only pony who might explain all of this to Lapis is Pinkie Pie,-”

Twilight, Rarity, and Applejack’s eyes all snapped wide open.

“-and as much as I like Pinkie,” Fluttershy continued, closing her eyes, “she can be a little bit misleading to listen to sometimes. It would really be awful if Lapis got the wrong idea… Girls?”

Fluttershy trailed off at the sound of galloping hooves, opening her eyes to see that the other ponies, save Rainbow Dash, were gone, and the door to the Corner Cafe was still swinging back and forth in its frame.

From a little ways above Fluttershy, Rainbow Dash cocked an eyebrow, then started leisurely flying toward the door. “Huh. I didn’t know Rarity could gallop that fast. Hey, Fluttershy, you coming or what?”

“Oh. Um, yes,” Fluttershy said, and she quickly trotted inside after Rainbow Dash.

Lapis was, at that very moment, genuinely impressed with Pinkie. She’d been talking for at least a minute straight, and Lapis hadn’t once heard her stop for breath. Granted, a cheerful, repetitive tune had been blaring from somewhere in the building for the same duration, but still.

“…And if you’re new, that meant you haven’t met anypony yet, and if you haven’t met anypony yet, you must not have any friends,” Pinkie was saying. “And if you don’t have any friends then you must be lonely, and-”

“No, I made friends,” Lapis said, waving a hoof. By repeatedly running into them on the street, but still, I’ve kept them. That counts, right? “Lyra Heartstrings, Bon Bon, Big Mac, and Nikki, here.”

“Oh,” Pinkie said. “We-ell, I figured out about Big Mac pretty quickly, but I didn’t think you knew Lyra and Bon Bon! -Ooh, look, there they are!”

Lapis frowned, then yelped as Pinkie started dragging him through the Corner Cafe, Nikki flapping her wings for balance atop his head. Moving through the room was rendered more difficult than usual by the sheer number of ponies crammed into the cafe; enough of them that Lapis suspected Pinkie really had invited everypony in town - between the repetitive music and the dozens of voices talking at once, the relaxed atmosphere of the cafe was simply gone. The Corner Cafe’s usual smell of coffee was now a few dozen times stronger than usual, and now it had an unmistakable undertone of melting cheese, and sautéed vegetables. The cause of this was explained when Lapis glimpsed one of the usual waitresses, Hot Cocoa, quickly stepping out of Pinkie’s way - atop her brown-coated back and her spread wings were multiple plates, most of which bore omelets with numerous toppings. Hot Cocoa looked visibly frazzled; the feathers at the edges of her wings were drooping, and several tufts of her mane were sticking out at odd angles. As Pinkie tugged Lapis past, Hot Cocoa barely even glanced at Lapis, her eyes too glazed-over to perceive anypony who wasn’t trying to make an order.

A few seconds later, Pinkie towed Lapis free of the sea of ponies and over to a large, round-table corner booth. There - sure enough - Lyra and Bon Bon were sitting, trying to have a hushed conversation over the babble of the crowd. Bon Bon was the first to catch sight of them, and she straightened in her seat, directing a tight grin at Pinkie. “And there they are!”

“Huh?” Lyra said, turning to look - then she saw Lapis and Pinkie, and her eyes widened. “Oh! Uh… hey, guys! What’s up?”

“Apparently, me,” Lapis said, glancing upward past Nikki, toward the ceiling that stood between himself and the hot air balloon. Bon Bon tensed slightly in her seat, and Lyra copped a smile even as her ears slowly tipped back.

Pinkie, meanwhile, seemed to notice nothing amiss, a cheerful and completely innocent grin spreading across her face. “Hey Lyra, hey Bon Bon! Lapis told me you three knew each other, so I thought I’d show him where you girls were!” Pinkie gestured to the booth with a hoof, and Lapis took a seat, Lyra scooting over to make room.

“Alrighty,” Pinkie said, briefly glancing around the room and pointing with both hooves at once. “So, here’s the rundown! The cupcake table is over there, and the muffin table is right next to it. The bathrooms are over there, and the waiters’ station is over there. Cider, punch, and regular drinks are there, there, and there, and fun is everywhere!”

Bon Bon cocked an eyebrow. “I think you mean confetti is everywhere.”

“Ooh, that too!” Pinkie said. “Though, that isn’t really too surprising. After all, wherever there’s confetti, there’s fun! …Actually, hang on just a second.”

Pinkie glanced to a table near the edge of the room, where Filthy Rich and another stallion in a suit collar seemed to be deep in the middle of some kind of serious discussion. They hardly even noticed when Pinkie zipped over to stand beside them and threw her hooves in the air, confetti erupting from her grasp. Only as the confetti started raining down around Filthy Rich’s head did he pause, shooting a surprised glance over at Pinkie - then, he shook his head with a grin, his associate openly chuckling as Pinkie beamed at the two of them.

“Well, now fun is everywhere,” Pinkie said, trotting back over. One of her ears twitched, and she glanced over toward the door, then turned back to face Lapis, Bon Bon, and Lyra. “Anyway, I think Twilight might be trying to get my attention from somewhere, so I’d better go see what she needs. Just say my name if you need me!”

And then, she turned and bounced away into the crowd, popping in and out of empty patches in the crowd with such efficiency that Lapis found himself wondering whether she’d adopted her gait specifically for making her way through bustling crowds.

Across the table from Lapis, Bon Bon watched Pinkie leave, remaining silent until she was out of earshot. Then, she returned her focus back to Lapis and Lyra. “She’s gone. Go.”

Lapis frowned. “…Go? What do you- hrk!”

“I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry!” Lyra said, further tightening her hooves around Lapis’ chest and inadvertently crushing the air from his lungs, Nikki settling unnoticed to the table to shoot Lyra a glare. “I wanted to warn you, I really did, but Pinkie, she- she was there, and I didn’t know how she was there, but she was, and I knew it would be bad if I told you this was going to happen, and I know I should’ve told you anyway and-”

“Lyra,” Lapis wheezed. “Can’t breathe.”

“Oh!” Lyra said, and she let go of Lapis’ chest, a faint blush forming on her face as she glanced off to the side. “Sorry! I’m… yeah, I should’ve… I’m really, really sorry, Lapis.”

Lapis took a few seconds to catch his breath, then held up a hoof. “It’s… it’s alright, Lyra. If anypony knows that Pinkie can be scary, it’s me.”

“You’re telling me,” Bon Bon muttered, brushing a few stray scraps of confetti off the table. “Hot Cocoa is going to have her work cut out for her, sweeping all this stuff up.”

Lapis snorted, rolling his eyes. “Oh, the Corner Cafe’s never getting rid of all the confetti. Pinkie’s basically saturated all of Ponyville by now, you wouldn’t believe how much of the stuff I find in ponies’ thatch.”

Bon Bon cocked an eyebrow over at Lapis. “You’re taking this pretty well, Lapis. You sure you’re alright?”

“Haven’t been replaced yet, if that’s what you’re asking,” Lapis muttered. Bon Bon shot Lapis a glare and made a ‘shush’ gesture, then glanced around to make sure nopony had overheard.

“Honestly,” Lapis continued, “like I said a week ago, when the party happens, it happens. And today… well, today it happened. Yeah, I would’ve preferred to not have been chased here from my workshop, and I might’ve almost flipped my sh-”

Lapis coughed. “…Uh, flipped my lid over the hot air balloon, but once this party’s over, it’ll be over. And, not gonna lie, that’ll be a huge weight off my shoulders.”

Of course, he was still stressed beyond reason, and once he got home Lapis would likely flop onto his bed and stay there for the rest of the day. Then there was the scream of terror and frustration that was crouching somewhere near the back of Lapis’ throat, waiting for an opportunity to express exactly how Lapis felt about Pinkie’s apparent ability to recruit two whole crowds of Ponyville’s citizens at the drop of a hat, for the express purpose of chasing him into a corner. Lapis would have to let that out at some point, but definitely not here. How I feel doesn’t matter, not when expressing it will make things worse. I just need to wait until all this is over.

Some of Lapis’ concealed frustration must’ve shown on his face, though, because Bon Bon frowned at him. She opened her mouth to speak - then cut herself off, looking behind Lapis as multiple sets of hoofsteps approached. Lapis glanced to the side to find Pinkie bouncing toward them again, a wide smile spreading across her face. This time, however, she was leading not only Big Mac, but all of the Elements of Harmony over to the booth.

Lapis swallowed. Unfortunately, he thought, it’s not over yet.

“Hey! Me again!” Pinkie said, bouncing over to the rest of the table. “And this time, I brought friends! A few of us wanted to introduce ourselves to the pony of the day here and talk about some stuff! You mind if we sit down?”

Lapis glanced at Bon Bon, who responded with half a confused shrug, before he nodded. “Yeah, sure, it’s no problem.”

“Okey-dokey-lokey!” Pinkie chirped. “Alright, Lapis, you already met Fluttershy and Twilight, so let me introduce the rest of the girls.”

Lapis briefly glanced over Fluttershy, Pinkie, and Twilight, and flashed through his relations to each of them. For Fluttershy, that’s almost nothing. Nikki helped me sneak into her house and fix her table, and apparently Fluttershy managed to restrain Pinkie, to a degree. I should try to reassure Fluttershy that she did alright, so she doesn’t feel guilty and try to make up for it, and I should also make sure she knows that Nikki’s okay. Fluttershy mumbled something as she sat down, and her gaze seemed to be constantly flickering between various points on the floor as Nikki flew over to her.

“Excuse me,” Twilight said as she squeezed past Pinkie, then carefully positioned herself in the booth and circumnavigated the table, briefly offering Lapis an apologetic smile as she found a spot. Twilight is a problem. She might actually know a thing or two about Griffon culture, so I need to keep the whole ‘I-was-raised-by-griffons’ shtick to a minimum. She might also be curious about artifice, so I need to bring that up as little as possible. She gave me the book about Cascades, so I should probably thank her for that… and, y’know, get around to reading at some point.
Oh, and she dropped me off a water tower. So there’s that.

Pinkie didn’t take a seat as Twilight scooted along the bench, hanging back to introduce the rest of the Elements. Pinkie’s been trying to throw me a party for two months, and today she succeeded. Just about the only thing I can imagine she wants from me now, is for me to say it’s a good party and that I’m having fun. …Unless she wants to know my birthday, which I’ll need to tell her about to save myself a repeat incident.

“So-oo,” Pinkie said, gesturing to Applejack. “You’ve already met Big Mac, but this is his little sister, Applejack! She and Big Mac are behind the muffins, and they’re super-duper good cooks, so make sure you grab some of those!”

“Pleasure to meet yuh,” Applejack said, offering a hoof for Lapis to shake. Her grip was just as firm as Big Mac’s - a bit firmer, if anything. “An’ Ah imagine Big Mac’s already gotten a platter of apple muffins, for all of us to share.”

Big Mac’s eyes widened with surprise, then he sighed and grabbed a plate that was full nearly to overflowing with muffins off his back, setting them at the center of the booth’s round table. “E-yup.”

Applejack, Lapis thought, as she took her seat. A voice of reason, but also a workaholic, who believes I’m overworking myself. I need to convince her otherwise, so she doesn’t drop by to see if she can lend a hoof. …Even if she’s right.

Pinkie grabbed Rarity with one hoof, then gestured to her with the other. “This is- !”

“Pinkie, dear, I can introduce myself quite well on my own,” Rarity said, then turned to face Lapis, an apologetic smile on her face. “Rarity, proprietor of the Carousel Boutique. I’m dreadfully sorry about any trouble my younger sister Sweetie Belle might have caused you, Mr. Print.”

“Just Lapis is fine, thank you,” Lapis said, raising a hoof. “And honestly, it’s no trouble. I’ve got everything fixed already, and I needed a wake-up call about safety standards anyway.”

Rarity. I know nothing about her, and as far as I know, she knows nothing about me. Let’s try to change that as little as possible. Rarity wasted no time taking her seat, and Pinkie shortly followed her.

“And of course, you already know me,” Rainbow Dash said, putting her hoof to her chest. She was hovering a few feet off the ground, an openly smug grin on her face. “Rainbow Dash, fastest flyer in Equestria, honorary Wonderbolt-”

“And the reason for three out of every four damaged rooftops in Ponyville, representing roughly sixty percent of my income,” Lapis said, and Rainbow Dash nearly fell out of the air, Bon Bon stifling a quiet snort. “Hi. My name is Lapis Print, and I’m the pony who cleans up your mess.”

“Oh,” Rainbow Dash said, steadying herself in flight. “Yeah, I guess you’d know about my, uh… landings, huh?”

Rainbow Dash. Case number two of I-know-nothing, except for the whole roofing thing. Legitimately skilled flyer, but with a tendency to jump to conclusions, and a bit of an ego… which I probably shouldn’t be poking. Don’t want her trying to show off or prove herself or anything.

“Don’t worry about it,” Lapis said, waving his hoof. “Like I said, you practically sign my paychecks, and the whole Sonic Rainboom thing is pretty cool.”

To Lapis’ relief, the confident grin returned to Rainbow Dash’s face almost at once, and she settled in her seat. “Yeah, it’s not bad.”

“Well, now that you’ve all introduced yourselves,” Bon Bon said, “I’m Bon Bon. I run the candy store on Acorn Route. I know Pinkie on a professional basis, Lapis as a friend, and I’m very close with Lyra here.”

“Oh, and I’m Lyra Heartstrings,” Lyra said, putting her hoof to her chest. “Um, hi. I’m a musician, and you might’ve heard me playing in a couple places around Ponyville. Like Bon Bon said, the two of us are pretty close, and Lapis is a good friend of ours.”

Lapis swallowed, then spoke. “…And I guess that brings us to me. My name’s Lapis Print, and I work out of the Red Repair Shop down on Nutmeg Way. With a couple of exceptions, I tend to keep to myself, so you probably know my work better than you know me. Oh, and this is Nikki,” Lapis added, briefly gesturing to the pigeon, who had again perched atop his head.

“…And that’s everypony!” Pinkie said, sliding into the final open space of the booth. “So Twilight, what was it you wanted to say?”

“Oh, right,” Twilight said, straightening in her seat and clearing her throat. “Um, hi. I know I already introduced myself, but I’m Twilight Sparkle, and… well, I need to apologize to you for a few things.”

The scream in the back of Lapis’ throat wriggled a little, but he swallowed it down and let Twilight speak.

“So, first of all, a few days after I moved into Ponyville, I accidentally chased somepony away from the library, and nearly dropped them off a water tower,” Twilight said. “Was that you?”

Bon Bon opened her mouth to speak, but Rarity got there first. “Twilight, dear, I believe that’s what we might call an accusation, not an apology.”

“Oh, no no no,” Twilight said, her eyes widening. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean it like that at all! It’s just… well, I went way too far back then, and I’ve wanted to find this pony and apologize. I shouldn’t have chased that pony at all, and I definitely shouldn’t have tried to use magic to stop them!”

Lapis thought for a second or two, then sighed. Might as well. If I got caught lying about it, that’d just make her suspicious again. “Well, I should’ve checked those books out properly, and owned up to the overdue fines instead of running, but yeah.”

Bon Bon, Big Mac, and Lyra shot Lapis surprised looks, and Twilight perked up in her seat. “So, wait. That was you?”

“Yes, it was me,” Lapis said. “Apology accepted, and I solemnly swear to make sure my library books are properly checked out from now on.”

“Oh, Twilight said, sitting back in her seat. “Well, thank you for your honesty. Again, I’m really sorry for that whole mess, and I can give you back the cloak that you were were wearing, if you want it.”

“Whoa-whoa-whoa,” Rainbow Dash said, taking off from her seat. “Hang on a sec. How come you started running from Twilight, anyway? And how come everypony had such a hard time finding you in the first place? Were you hiding from-”

“Rainbow Dash!” Applejack muttered, and with a gesture as quick and casual as raising a set of blinds, Applejack reached up with one hoof, grabbed Rainbow Dash by the tail, and pulled her back into her seat. “Now, that was just plain rude! What the hay were you thinkin’-”

Okay, now it’s time for the real work.

Lapis had been running through versions of this conversation for days now, and though he hadn’t expected to have it in this context, he knew that his best chance was to tell part of the truth - so, he shut his eyes, took a deep breath, and spoke. “No, she’s… got a point.”

The group of ponies at the table looked up, and Lapis deliberately waited for a beat, looking down at the table, before he spoke. “Look, for… reasons of my own, when I arrived in Ponyville, I didn’t want any kind of welcome party. I heard that Pinkie would usually throw those-”

Pinkie nodded, confusion wrinkling her brow. “Uh-huh!”

“-so, yeah, I avoided her on purpose,” Lapis said. “That turned out to be tough. Like, scary tough. I’m sure you didn’t mean for me to be worried,” Lapis said, glancing at Pinkie, who was now wearing an expression of genuine concern, “but I was legitimately scared for my safety a few times. Like ten minutes ago, when I was chased here by an entire-”

On the wall behind Pinkie’s head, a slightly-crooked painting suddenly jerked itself straight, and Lapis froze, noticing the heat building in his chest for the first time. Oh. Guess I really am pissed, huh?

Pinkie spoke before Lapis could continue. “…Oh no. Lapis, wait, I’m really, really sorry about all that! I didn’t want those ponies to chase you, I just wanted then to nudge you over this way! Oh…” Pinkie looked frantically around the room, a wild panic beginning to grow in her eyes as Applejack’s face… wait, is Applejack nervous?

“It’s fine!” Lapis said. He had to pause and swallow again, Pinkie freezing as Lapis held up a hoof. “It’s fine. I’m here now, I’m having fun, it’s all good.”

Lapis cleared his throat, trying not to stare at the look of visible relief on Applejack’s face as Pinkie settled down. “But anyway, yeah. Between Pinkie chasing me, and the whole thing with Twilight and her library books, I didn’t want any of you knowing who, or where, I was, just in case you told. Plus, you all kind of saved the world, and I didn’t want to make any worse of an impression than I already had. So, yeah. I steered clear of you.” Lapis coughed, then glanced over at Applejack. “I, um, think you actually hired me to fix some stuff a few times, and I might’ve overdone the staying-away thing a little.”

“It’s alright, sugarcube,” Applejack said, fixing Lapis with a quick grin before turning to the rest of the table. “What’d Ah tell you? Straight from the pony’s mouth. Did everypony actually hear it this time, or do Ah need to say it again?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Rainbow Dash said, waving a hoof. “Sorry, I guess I just couldn’t believe you got away from Pinkie.”

“I got lucky, and that’s all I’m gonna say about it,” Lapis said. “Anyway, yeah, that’s my side of things. Sorry that took so long, Twilight, what was it you wanted to say?”

“Just that I was sorry,” Twilight said. “For the water tower, for the Parasprites, and for, well, just making a huge thing out of you.”

Huh. I was a ‘huge thing?’ Well, shit, if avoidance gets this much attention, then I might need to reconsider my tactics with Luna.

-Actually, no. Twilight’s scary, but Luna is two steps away from being a goddess. In terms of potential to fuck me up, I’m pretty sure the Princesses are in a whole other order of magnitude.

“Well, you already apologized for the Parasprites, so don’t worry about that,” Lapis said. “As for the rest, just… please don’t do it again, and we’re all good.” He cleared his throat, then glanced around the table. “So, I thought there was a plate of apple muffins around here?”

Rainbow Dash snickered, smirking as she glanced to the side. “Not anymore, there’s not.”

Lapis followed her gaze, and shortly found a large and empty plate sitting on the table, directly in front of a blissfully-chewing Big Mac. As Lapis watched, Big Mac swallowed and opened his eyes - to find everypony else at the table looking at him.

Big Mac paused for a few seconds, and at first Lapis just thought the gears in his head were turning - then, Big Mac blushed. “…Nope.”

Bon Bon was having a very weird day, today. And Lapis Print wouldn’t be hearing the end of it for the whole month.

First of all, there’s Pinkie’s military-grade ambush of a party, she thought, giving Lapis a quick once-over as a half-annoyed, half-amused Applejack left the table to grab another plate of muffins. Which is bad enough by itself, but not really his fault.

No, nearly blowing my cover is a bigger problem. The entire point of having a secret monster-hunting agency was to make it easier to hunt secretive monsters, like Changelings. If whatever bugs might be in Ponyville knew who S.M.I.L.E.’s local agents were, then how in Tartarus was Sweetie Drops supposed to find them?

And then there was Lapis’ admission about his involvement with the water-tower chase. Both ponies present had been accounted for, but Bon Bon still couldn’t believe that Lapis hadn’t told her and Lyra.

So far, though, the conversation between Lapis and the Elements was the strangest part yet. Bon Bon knew an interrogation when she saw one, and this wasn’t an interrogation. The trouble was that Lapis seemed to think otherwise, if his general tension was anything to go by. Even now, as Rarity engaged him in some casual proprietor-to-proprietor chatter, Lapis was keeping silent for a second or two before each response, his ears twitching atop his head as if they wanted to lay back.

Time for another round of ‘What’s With Lapis, Anyway?’ Bon Bon thought. He was mad about the party earlier, but it looks like he’s got a hold of the harness for now. Obviously, it’s embarrassing for Lapis to admit he was being a reverse-stalker, I don’t know how the hay I’d ever admit to something like that, so he’s probably trying to save face. …That’s the best-case scenario, anyway.
Worst-case, all that guilt he shouldn’t have is catching up to him. Or he’s been replaced.

“An’ here we are,” Applejack said, returning to the booth with a plate of muffins balanced on her back. “Ah tell ya, this building wasn’t meant to hold this many ponies. Last time I got so jostled movin’ through a chunk o’ town was when Ah was trying to herd Parasprites.”

She slid out a series of smaller plates in rapid-fire sequence, dishing out a muffin or two to each pony at the table - except Big Mac, who seemed disappointed but not surprised. Lapis was the last to get a plate, Applejack sliding it over to him with a friendly smile.

“So, if you don’t mind me askin’,” Applejack said, “where are y’all from?”

Cue ear twitch, Bon Bon thought, and Lapis’ ears twitched briefly backward atop his head as Lyra shot Applejack a surprised look. Yeah, definitely not replaced. Honestly, I don’t know why he tries to hold them still.

“It’s, uh… a small town, and it’s pretty far out,” Lapis said, glancing off to the side. “You’ve probably never heard of it.”

Across the table, Twilight cocked an eyebrow, then grinned. “I think you might be surprised. Why don’t you give us a try?”

Lapis’ ears twitched back again, and he briefly glanced at Bon Bon and Lyra before turning to Twilight and speaking. “Well, it’s in a country called A-mare-ica, and it’s pretty far out, far enough that I haven’t found it on any maps around here. I wound up in Ponyville pretty much by accident, but I’ll be heading back there someday.”

Twilight genuinely looked surprised, but it didn’t take long for her to start thinking, if the squinting was anything to judge by. “Hmm… Did you come here from the east or the west?”

“…East-ish, I’m pretty sure,” Lapis said.

East? Bon Bon thought, frowning. I thought Lapis didn’t know where Amareica was relative to Equestria…
Wait, now I get it. Lapis still doesn’t want to be anywhere near Twilight. But it’s not like that would stop Lapis from mentioning his magical-accident problem to one of the three ponies in Equestria who could solve it, right?
Right?

Bon Bon took what would appear, to most outside observers, to be a casual deep breath. There were, however, a squadron’s worth of guardsponies in Canterlot who would - if they were present - exchange nervous glances, and start looking for the nearest exit.

Twilight’s face lit up. “Oh! It must be somewhere near Griffon territory - that explains the portrait of Baron von Hoofber, and your doorway ornamentation!”

“Baron von what?” Lyra asked, giggling. “Wait, if you mean the portrait of the Griffon guy with the mustache, Lapis has that because I gave it to him. I don’t think either of us know who he is.”

Lapis snorted, his shoulders relaxing in his seat. “Nope. As far as I knew, he was just some griffon with the best mustache I’ve ever seen. …But how exactly did you know I had that in my house?”

Twilight winced in her seat, as did Rainbow Dash, and Bon Bon cocked an eyebrow.

“Uh…” Twilight said, her ears flopping back. “…I glanced through your window when I dropped off that book?”

“Sure,” Lapis said, and Bon Bon sighed, resting her face on her hoof for a moment. Alright then, maybe keeping Twilight at a distance isn’t the worst idea.

Rainbow and Twilight’s poking around aside, this is going way better than I’d hoped for, Lapis thought.

Fluttershy has been talking with Nikki for basically the entire time, at least Rarity and Applejack are reasonable enough to call Twilight and Rainbow Dash out on their bolder probing, and Pinkie is… well, just kinda vibing.

Lapis briefly looked over at Pinkie, just in time to watch her finish chugging her fifth large glass of punch, which she slammed down on the table. Then, as a grin spread across her face, Pinkie began to vibrate in her seat - much to the confusion of Rarity, who was sitting next to her.

“Alright, so let me get this straight,” a scratchy voice began, and Lapis glanced over to see that Rainbow Dash was looking at him intently from a foot or two above her seat. “You’ve been in Ponyville for, what, two months?”

“Yep,” Lapis said.

“And that whole time, you managed to never get caught by Pinkie, once?”

“Had a couple of close calls, but yeah,” Lapis said, shrugging. “And if your next question is ‘how,’ I’m not telling.”

“Well, why not?” Rainbow asked, her brow furrowing. “You’re not planning on doing it again, are you?”

“I sure hope not,” Lapis replied. “As long as she doesn’t throw anything on this scale for my birthday or whatever else, I won’t have any reason to.”

“Ooh! When’s that birthday?” Pinkie was suddenly right next to Lapis, staring directly into his eyes from the side.

“…April twenty-fifth,” Lapis said, and Pinkie returned to her seat beside Rarity in a bubblegum-pink blur, pulling a sticker-coated clipboard and a chunky, sharpened pencil from somewhere within her mane. As Pinkie flipped through a few pages, then took the pencil in her mouth and began frantically scribbling, Rarity glanced over Pinkie’s shoulder and visibly paled, her eyes widening as she started to read.

From beside Lapis, Bon Bon huffed. “The real reason Lapis isn’t telling is because it makes him look silly.”

“I- what?” Lapis asked, feeling heat rising to his face as he turned to face a smirking Bon Bon.

“Well, it does,” Bon Bon said, before turning back to Rainbow Dash. “And don’t worry - if he tries hiding from Pinkie again, I’ll put a stop to it before it costs me any more pancakes.”

“…What? Pancakes?” Rainbow Dash asked, cocking an eyebrow. “Wait, how do pancakes help you hide from Pinkie?”

Bon Bon fixed Rainbow with a deadpan stare. “This isn’t just Pinkie logic, Rainbow Dash. This is counter-Pinkie logic. Are you really sure you want it explained?”

Rainbow snickered. “Yeah, okay. So how’d you get away from Twilight, then?”

Lapis glanced between Bon Bon and Rainbow for a second or two, then sighed. “Panic, mostly. Apparently, if I get freaked out badly enough, I can gallop pretty fast.”

“You’ve also got a fairly potent telekinetic field,” Twilight added, breaking off her conversation with Lyra. “I’ve known a few other unicorns who could grab objects as heavy as those barrels out of the air, but not many of them. Hay, even I usually modify my telekinesis with a gravitational interweave for anything weighing more than fifty pounds.”

“…Well, yeah, that too.” Lapis said, pretending he understood what Twilight was talking about.

“What really threw me off, though, was how you got past my Grasping-Creeper Charm,” Twilight continued, levitating a muffin off the platter. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a unicorn, or anypony else, gallop along a wall without magical aid before. Just out of curiosity, do you know any goats?”

“Whoa-whoa-whoa,” Rainbow Dash said, waving a hoof. “Wait a second, you galloped on a wall?”

“Badly, but yeah,” Lapis said. “Fell right on my side as soon as I got past those vines, too. I actually bruised my hip up pretty bad.”

“Well, yeah, but how’d you get past them in the first place?” Rainbow asked, leaning forward as she hovered a few inches forward. “Is it just about building up speed or what?”

“Uh, that and getting the angle right, yeah,” Lapis said, leaning back as Rainbow slowly continued to inch forward, her ears standing straight up, her eyes wide and attentive. “You’re basically using your own momentum as a substitute for gravity, and every step you take eats a little bit of that momentum, so you have to get the angle forward enough for every step to count… Hey, could you sit back down? You’re hovering right over the muffins.”

“Huh?” Rainbow asked, looking down and appearing to notice for the first time that she was now hovering directly above the table. “Oh. Whoops.” She turned tail and resumed her seat, where she began staring off into the distance, her ears and wings twitching as her eyes narrowed.

Applejack took notice of Rainbow’s distraction, and snorted. “Rainbow Dash, if Ah find muddy hoofprints on the sides of my barn walls anytime soon, you and Ah’re gonna have words about where you try out your new stunts.”

“Whuh- hey, I was going to use clouds!” Rainbow Dash said, snapping out of her reverie to glare at Applejack. “There’s no way I’m gonna land in the mud practicing this!”

Oh. Well, shit. “Uh, maybe don’t try it going supersonic, either,” Lapis added, quickly waving his hooves. “Getting a lot of momentum is fine, but there’s only so much of it your legs can take before you’re just crashing into a wall.”

“Yeah, yeah, I got it,” Rainbow Dash said, waving a dismissive hoof, already staring off into the distance again.

Applejack rolled her eyes, then she, Big Mac, and Rainbow Dash stepped out of the way as Rarity and Pinkie Pie made their way along the bench. Applejack glanced at Big Mac with slight confusion - then, as Big Mac turned toward Rainbow Dash, Applejack looked to Lapis. “Anyhow, y’all said you were from… A-mare-ica, was it? What’s it like there?”

“Not nearly as exciting as Ponyville,” Lapis said, levitating a muffin off his plate. “It still keeps you busy, though.” He took a small bite of the muffin, meaning to use his chewing as an excuse to think about how much to divluge - but his train of thought ground to a halt as soon as the pastry hit his tongue. “Mm!”

Applejack frowned. “Something the matter?”

Lapis shook his head, swallowing. “No, nothing at all. I think this is the best apple muffin I’ve ever had!”

“Oh,” Applejack said, smiling. “Well, thank you kindly!”

Lapis took another small bite, trying again to think. “Seriously, I’ve got to get your recipe. But anyway, that reminds me - since Bon Bon hasn’t asked yet, around how soon is cider season?”

From next to Lapis, Bon Bon pretended not to perk up, and Applejack chuckled. “Ah guess it had to come up at some point, what with her an’ everypony else in Ponyville wantin’ to know. It’s not too far out, now, only a week or so, and Ah’m lookin’ forward to gettin’ a little rest.”

“I know the feeling,” Lapis muttered, glancing briefly toward Rainbow Dash, who was still boasting to Big Mac. “The colder mornings lately have been nice, but as soon as the afternoons start to cool down, my roofing jobs are going to get a lot easier.”

Applejack followed Lapis’ gaze. “Rainbow really causes you that much trouble?”

“…I like think of it as ‘income’ more than ‘trouble’,” Lapis said, shrugging. “But yeah, she keeps me busy. Though, lately, I have been getting a few less roof jobs than usual.”

Applejack nodded, turning back to Lapis. “Ah’d expected as much. She’s takin’ it easy for a while, since her flyin’ competition won’t happen again ‘till next year. Y’all should’ve seen her tryin’ to put on a brave face for it, though… Still, Ah’d hate to think she was puttin’ you through the wringer, what with all her practicin’.”

Bingo! Now’s my chance! “Seriously,” Lapis said, levitating up another muffin and tearing it in half, “it’s fine. Repair work is tedious, especially roofing, but it’s really, really not as tiring as you’d expect.” Lapis pushed the halves of the muffin back together, shutting his eyes against the flash of light as his Cutie Mark surged with warmth, and opened his eyes to find that the muffin was once again whole. “See?”

Applejack blinked, inspected the muffin, and chuckled, scooting out of the way as Pinkie Pie and Rarity passed her and headed toward the front of the cafe. “Welp, s’pose Ah can’t argue with that.”

Then, Applejack paused for a second, her gaze flicking to the table, and Lapis frowned. Somehow, though, I get the feeling you’re about to try.

“…Listen, Ah don’t mean to intrude with what Ah’m about to say,” Applejack eventually said, lowering her voice a little. “And if Ah am pokin’ my nose into your business, Ah’m sorry for it. But, what you said earlier, about how you mean to get back to your home someday…”

Uh-oh.

“…well, Ah’m sure it’s something y’all can take care of yourself, but don’t be afraid to ask for a helping hoof,” Applejack finished, meeting Lapis’ gaze. “Trust me, it makes a lot of things easier. And, well-”

Applejack cut herself off to make way as Pinkie and Rarity returned, Pinkie pouting slightly as she escorted a glass of water back to her seat, Rarity nibbling a cheese danish and looking distinctly pleased with herself. Applejack grimaced for a moment, then turned back to Lapis, lowering her voice a little further. “-well, Ah’d just hate for y’all to feel like you’re not welcome anywhere. Ah know we Elements o’ Harmony might seem like we’re on our own side of the fence sometimes, but Ah promise, me and my friends’re just ponies, the same as you and yours.”

Except you’re predestined to save the world, Lapis thought, but as he did, he looked around the table, taking in the ponies sitting around it. Lyra was rambling to Twilight, who was nodding attentively with a notepad at her side, while Bon Bon looked on and smirked, making a comment. Fluttershy was speaking, albeit quietly, having what looked like a casual catch-up with Nikki - and on the other side of Rarity and Pinkie Pie, Rainbow Dash was reaching the conclusion of her story and throwing her hooves wide in the air, while Big Mac did his best to look suitably impressed.

It felt… like being at a family reunion, all the family Lapis didn’t know he had chatting away with the faces he knew already. It felt warm, familiar, and Lapis suddenly realized that he wasn’t angry anymore, wasn’t panicking, wasn’t even guilty. He was just happy to be here.

“So, Ah guess what Ah’m tryin’ ta say is…” Applejack began, and Lapis turned to meet her gaze. “Y’all don’t need to feel nervous about droppin’ by Sweet Apple Acres, or any of the other places where we tend to be. We’re plenty friendly, Ah promise.” Applejack beamed, her eyes shutting above her grin. “Why, Ah know Ah’d be happy to help you feel at home!”

At the last word, Lapis’ happiness simply vanished, all the warmth and comfort snuffed out at once like a campfire beneath a rolling boulder. Lapis felt his smile slide off his face, just for a second, and did his best to fix it back in place as Rarity glanced in his direction.

“Thanks,” Lapis said, as Applejack opened her eyes. “That, uh… that means a lot, I appreciate it.” He cleared his throat, then tried for a chuckle. “Yeah, all that stuff I pulled definitely seems pretty silly, now! It’ll be a huge relief to keep things more casual.”

“Glad to hear it!” Applejack said. “Ah'll see if Ah can whip up some welcome with a little less fuss, next time y'all stop by Sweet Apple Acres. We sure won't have too much else to do once cider season's taken care of... well, unless somethin' like last year happens."

"Oh, what happened last year?" Lapis asked, and nodded attentively as Applejack began reminiscing, but in his head, he was already back in his workshop, staring down at the book on his counter, Applejack’s words still echoing in his ears - “Ah’d be happy to help you feel at home!”

Yeah, I bet you would be, Lapis thought. You, and just about everypony else here.

Unfortunately, that’s the problem.

Somehow, the rest of the brunch went by in a blur, and by the time Lapis took his leave of the Corner Cafe with Nikki perched atop his head, it was well into the afternoon. The scaffolding and detour signs had all vanished, the banners were being folded, and most of the confetti had been carried elsewhere by the wind. Lyra and Bon Bon both commented on this as they left with Lapis, but Lapis was only halfway listening, trying to keep focused on something, anything but his current situation.

They’d gotten back to Lapis’ shop before he knew it, and Lapis was more than happy to disappear into the kitchen for awhile, losing himself in the process of scrubbing some dirty dishes clean. He followed it up by fixing a few grilled-cheese sandwiches - he hadn’t been able to eat anything after that first muffin.

“…so yeah, it seems like she really learned a lot about Cascades,” Lyra was saying, as Lapis walked back into his living room. “Ooh, is that grilled cheese?”

“Yep,” Lapis said, dishing out a sandwich each to Lyra and Bon Bon. “I’ve got some tomato soup I can reheat, too, but I’m not sure you two’re hungry enough to eat it.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Bon Bon said, waving a hoof. “I’m stuffed, I don’t think I’ll even be able to finish the sandwich.” She took a bite as Lapis glanced around his storefront for a seat, then disappeared behind the counter to grab his stool. “So, how’s it feel?”

“Having Pinkie off my back?” Lapis asked, floating the stool over to the table and stepping into the kitchen to grab his own sandwich. “Not gonna lie, it’s a huge relief.” Lapis paused for a moment, then grabbed a smaller bowl, pouring in some birdseed for Nikki.

I still need to ask Nikki how her conversation with Fluttershy went, Lapis thought, as he turned back toward the living room. And I’d better start stocking up on wattle-and-daub supplies, to help clean up after the new trick I might’ve taught Rainbow Dash. But besides those two, I think I’ve just about covered Pinkie, Twilight, Rarity and Applejack.

“Y'know, Lapis, it looked like you and Applejack were getting along pretty well,” Lyra chimed, as Lapis stepped into the hallway.

“Yeah, she’s… alright,” Lapis said, walking into the living room. Kinda surprised that she jumped right into talking with me, though. I get she was concerned that I was overworking myself and all, but I’d really expected Twilight to do the whole you-don’t-need-to-hide lecture. Did Applejack have some other motive, or-

Lyra grinned. “So, did you two hit it off or what?”

Lapis froze in place, his eyes snapping wide open, the plate with his sandwich and the bowl of birdseed dropping right out of his telekinetic grip and shattering on the floor, Nikki squawking in protest at the loss of her meal.

Oh, Lapis thought, as a cold tingle of dread ran up his spine. Oh, no. Oh, no no no no NO.

“I think you broke him,” Bon Bon noted, but Lapis wasn’t listening. Okay. Keep calm, think it through. Applejack was probably just being friendly, right? I mean, yeah, she technically invited me over to her house, but she only meant it for courtesy's sake-

“LAPIS!”

A pair of hooves clapped together a few inches away from Lapis’ nose, and he flinched as he snapped back to reality, Lyra stepping back. “Sorry, you were zoning out pretty hard there. Are you okay?”

“Yep,” Lapis squeaked, then he cleared his throat. “Yeah, all good. So, you know how I was out of town for the day a while ago?”

Bon Bon and Lyra exchanged glances, then nodded.

“Well, me and Zecora were exploring the Castle of the Two Sisters,” Lapis said, and Lyra perked up at once. “Zecora was sorta just looking around, but I was trying to find anything that might’ve led back to A-mare-ica.”

“And did you find anything?” Bon Bon asked.

“Two possible leads,” Lapis said, levitating the logbook and the cursed book off the counter. “One’s dubious, and one’s outright suspicious.”

Lapis started by cracking open the logbook and flipping to a page he’d bookmarked. “So, this book’s from the castle, and it’s basically just a giant receipt for the most recent imports that the Castle’s had. The thing is, starting from fifty years before the Castle’s destruction, Equestria was importing a lot of advanced metals from Griffonstone - steel beams, aluminum, a couple of copper alloys. I think I even saw a smaller shipment of tungsten and titanium at some point.”

“Alright,” Bon Bon said, glancing over the page. “What’s your point?”

“Well, there’s two of them. Point number one is, I’ve heard that Griffonstone knows their metallurgy, but I know A-mare-ica does, too.” Lapis said. “Titanium and tungsten are both things we know how to work with, and we’ve found enough uses for them to set up dedicated refineries. But Griffonstone only ever put out one shipment of each, and when they did - this is point two, by the way - the name attached to it was the same name attached to a lot of other alloy shipments…”

Lapis scanned down the page, then touched his hoof to one of the lines. “Gara Pinion. Odds are, she was just a metalworking prodigy, but it normally takes a lot more than one person to figure out the refining process for so many different metals. My guess is, she was the figurehead for some larger R&D team - but my hope is that she was some kind of ambassador or trade dealer to A-mare-ica.”

Lyra nodded, but there was a concerned frown wrinkling her brow. “Okay, so what’s your other lead?”

“That’d be this book,” Lapis said, lifting the cursed book from the table and flipping it open to the riddle. “So, just to make sure, can you see the words on this page?”

Bon Bon looked down at the book, then shook her head. “Looks blank to me.”

“Zecora thought so, too,” Lapis said. “Problem is, I can see a riddle on there, and nopony else seems able to. This book just appeared next to me while I was exploring the castle library, right next to the record book and a little guide to pegasus aerodynamics.”

“Huh,” Lyra said. She glanced at the book, but that concerned furrow was still on her forehead. “…Lapis, this is a bit of a weird question, but you’re not leaning into this all of a sudden because of Applejack, are you?”

That cold tingle of dread ran up Lapis’ spine again, and he took a deep breath. “No, it’s that I was going to bring this up with the two of you as soon as possible. It’s about time I stopped trying to do this alone, and some of the stuff Applejack said reminded me of that, that’s all. Anyway, either way, the library in the Castle of the Two Sisters has given me the closest things I have to a lead so far, and there’s at least one bookshelf set into an alcove in the roof that I can’t explore without wings. So.”

Lapis took a deep breath, then looked between Lyra and Bon Bon. “Do either of you know any pegasi who might help?”

“Nopony willing to go into the Everfree,” Bon Bon said, shaking her head. “Lapis, if it’s ancient Griffonian history you’re interested in, then maybe try to find an ancient Griffon historian, instead of poking around moldy old ruins inside of the most monster-infested forest in Equestria?”

“That’d be better,” Lapis said, closing the books and returning them to the counter, “but I don’t know any ancient Griffon historians, either. So, I’m working with what I have, as much as I can. Thanks anyway, though.”

“No problem,” Lyra said, though she still looked concerned. “…Lapis, I know you already said this wasn’t about Applejack, but you really zoned out when I mentioned her. Are you sure-”

Lapis fought to suppress the shiver, trying to keep his voice calm as he spoke. “Yes, I’m sure. Please stop asking.”

“Well, if you say so,” Lyra said, glancing at the floor. Lapis frowned, following her gaze - then grimaced as he spotted the birdseed scattered on the ground, which had spontaneously arranged itself into a grid.

“Listen, it’s just… it’s been a long day, alright?” Lapis said, pulling the broom and dustpan out of the closet and beginning to sweep up the birdseed. “I’d really like to spend the rest of it not thinking about the Elements of Harmony, if at all possible. That’s all.”

“If you say so,” Lyra repeated, as Lapis returned to the kitchen and dumped the dustpan into the trash.

There’s two things I need to do, Lapis thought, as he poured Nikki a new bowl of birdseed. One, I need to investigate that book. And, if that turns up blank, then I need to make myself some better equipment and go back to the Castle of the Two Sisters. Even if I don’t find any new information there, there’s got to be some historically important stuff, and getting it to a museum might net me a meeting with some academics.

And whatever I do, I need to do it fast, Lapis finished, as he re-entered the living room and presented Nikki with the birdseed. Because there’s no way, none in hell, that I’m sticking around long enough for any pony to try dating me.

Author's Note

Still alive, motherfucker. Also, it's been a month - sorry, everypony! No surprise second chapter this time; I just wanted to make sure I got this one right, considering this chapter's kind of a big deal for the story. Also, midterm season decided I needed one last round of suffering, so here we are. (It's a shame, too, I was really hoping to have the Nightmare Night chapter happen sometime around Halloween... with any luck, I should still be able to get a Hearth's Warming Eve chapter done at the appropriate time.)

On the bright side, my laptop's been fixed! Woo! Now, if only my backup laptop hadn't decided to get right back on its bullshit, the sinks and water fountains in my dorm weren't completely shut off for lead testing, and I hadn't been sick with the exact same cough (it's not Covid; don't worry) for a good two weeks straight. If only.

So, actual story stuff now. In the next chapter, we're probably going to have a more Bon Bon and Lyra-centric chapter (definitely within the next two weeks, I promise) maybe with a check-in scene or two for the M6, while Lapis tries to figure out what his next steps are (and definitely not get sidetracked, nope, no way that's happening.) Also, in case you think Luna is just sitting around twiddling her thumbs, don't, because she has hooves, and the closest she can get is doing the, uh... the arm roll dance thing, whatever it's called.

And finally, thanks again for reading this story, even when I drop off the face of the Earth for a month. It means a bunch that you're sticking around - so, rest assured I'll see you in the next one! Till then!

16/16/16/16: Repinkussions

On the morning after the party, Bon Bon awoke in her bed with her curlers still in her mane, golden sunlight streaming through the window onto her bed. For a good five minutes, she simply lay there, trying and failing to make sense of what had happened the day before.

Did I dream it all? she wondered, and then immediately dismissed the idea. None of her dreams had ever been quite that long before. So it really happened. Pinkie actually threw a Welcome-to-Ponyville party for Lapis, she really decorated a hot air balloon to look like his head, and she really managed to jam half of Ponyville inside the Corner Cafe.

…Am I sure that all happened?

Bon Bon clambered out of bed, walked over to the bathroom, and spent a few slow, painstaking minutes extricating all the curlers from her mane. Then, she made her way into the storefront of her building, glancing for a moment at the stack of dirty pots and pans next to her sink, which hadn’t been there the night before.

Walking into the storefront and catching a whiff of cooked eggs and mushrooms provided Bon Bon with some explanation for the newly-dirty cookware. The eggs were sitting on the counter, the steam curling off them glimmering gold in the sunlight that poured through the store windows. Lyra was standing by the window, her lips moving soundlessly as she stared through the glass, casting a long shadow across the slightly-dusty wooden floor. Lyra looked in need of a brushing - her mane and tail had enough protruding loose strands to make Bon Bon think of a porcupine - but she definitely had the bright-eyed to go with her bushy-tailed, her gaze rapidly flickering across the street outside.

“Morning, Ly-Ly,” Bon Bon said, looking down at the plates. “…Did you make breakfast?”

“Morning, BB. I sure did!” Lyra chirped, grinning with pride as she turned from the window, starting toward the counter. “Nothing really fancy, y’know, just scrambled eggs with some sautéed veggies, but you weren’t awake yet, and I thought it might be nice!”

Bon Bon grinned, then sat down. “It looks wonderful, Lyra. Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it,” Lyra responded, and they both sat down.

And then, to Bon Bon’s surprise, neither of them started eating. It didn’t have anything to do with the eggs - they really did look delicious, and Bon Bon’s mouth was watering at the prospect of tucking in, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it. Instead, she and Lyra kept shooting sideways glances at each other, and somehow, Bon Bon couldn’t help feeling as if she were waiting for-

“So, are we going to talk about yesterday,” Lyra blurted out, “or…”

“Yes,” Bon Bon said, with a sigh of relief. “Yes, we’re going to talk about yesterday. Yesterday was bucking surreal - no, you know what, yesterday was bucked, Lyra. What the hay even was yesterday?!”

“I don’t know!” Lyra said, nearly knocking her eggs off the counter as she threw her hooves wide. “I’d figured Pinkie was going to go a little overboard, but that was insane!”

“‘Insane’ doesn’t begin to cover it,” Bon Bon said, putting her own hoof down on the counter. “Frankly, if Lapis decided to pursue a reining order, I’d help him. …If I thought it would stop Pinkie, anyway, which I don’t.”

“Okay, let’s talk about Pinkie for a second,” Lyra said, putting a hoof to her forehead. “Seriously, I get that Lapis was able to put her off for two months, but that whole brunch thing was closer to a festival than a party. Are we sure that it wasn’t, like, some kind of twisted retaliation?”

“Yes, we’re sure,” Bon Bon sighed. “Pinkie’s always had a few screws loose, and Lapis… well, I guess he just managed to loosen those screws a little more.”

“Okay,” Lyra said, a worried frown creasing her brow, “but that’s worse. You do get how that’s worse, right? What if this is Pinkie’s new normal?”

“I don’t think it is,” Bon Bon huffed, “because I’m pretty sure it’s always been her ‘normal.’ Nopony’s ever gotten away from her for two months before, so we’ve never gotten the chance to see it, but this is the same Pinkie we’ve always known about.”

“So what’re we supposed to do?” Lyra asked, raising her hooves. “There’s no way I’m going to just sit here and pretend there’s nothing wrong with how she treated Lapis. That’s horseapples, Bon Bon! This whole mess is horseapples!”

“Yes, it is!” Bon Bon snapped, as something within her finally broke. “If that party had happened to me, I would’ve told Pinkie to take her hot air balloon and shove it up her plot, and you would too, right?”

“Uh, yeah!” Lyra replied. “…So, wait. Why didn’t we?”

“We were waiting for the pony who should’ve had a Cascade over this whole mess,” Bon Bon said, putting her hoof down. “So why didn’t he? Something is seriously wrong with that unicorn, Lyra. There’s nopony - hay, no-one in Equestria, who would take that party sitting down and act like everything was just business as usual. There just isn’t. So why did Lapis?”

“I don’t know!” Lyra sighed, resting her elbows on the counter as her ears flopped back. “And I know we should probably ask him, but… well, you know he’s not going to tell us, right? I mean, you saw how hard he clammed up about Applejack.”

“Oh, he’s going to bucking tell us,” Bon Bon muttered. “I don’t know how to make him do it yet, but Lapis needs to open up. Whatever the hay is going on, he’s running himself ragged over it, and if he keeps trying to solve his magical accident without getting actual, professional help… well, sooner or later, he’s going to put himself in real danger.”

Lyra swallowed, her ears tucking back, then she nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, we’ve got to do something. I can’t imagine what Lapis is feeling that’s got him putting his muzzle to the grindstone for so long, but it’s got to be bad, he’s shown that much. I…”

Lyra paused, her ears perking up. “Huh. Wait a second.”

“What?” Bon Bon asked, as Lyra’s gaze began to flicker across the counter. “You crack the mystery or something?”

“No,” Lyra said slowly, “but I think I’ve figured out what we’re doing wrong.” She levitated her fork off the counter, then gestured to Bon Bon’s eggs. “You might want to tuck into those before they get cold. We’ve got a long day ahead of us.”

Bon Bon took a slow, deep breath. “Lyra. I have had it up to here with ponies being cryptic to me. For the love of Celestia, what do you know?”

Lyra winced. “Well, I don’t know anything. But, I do have an idea - it’s super counter-intuitive, though, so I just want to make sure you’re at a hundred percent before I try explaining. I promise, I’ll lead you through the whole thing, start-to-finish, just… please eat first?”

Bon Bon glanced at her eggs, then sighed. They do look delicious. “Oh, alright.”

Lyra smiled apologetically as Bon Bon stuffed the first forkful into her face. “Thanks. Love you, BB.”

“Luff yu too, Ly-Ly,” Bon Bon muttered, before swallowing her mouthful of eggs. “But wherever we’re going, we’re stopping by Mayor Mare’s office first. If Lapis isn’t going to pursue legal action, then I sure as Tartarus will.”

Meanwhile, a neon-yellow pegasus stallion was standing outside the Red Repair Shop, holding a large cardboard box of nuts and bolts in assorted sizes and quietly rethinking the decisions that had led him to knock on Lapis Print’s front door. His breath was fogging in the early-autumn air, and the yellow of his coat was shining almost painfully bright in the morning sun.

He reached out to knock again, but to his surprise, it swung open before he could touch it. Hard Hat felt his eyes grow a little wider as Lapis Print stepped around the door - the repair-pony looked terrible, like he’d been up all night. There were bags under his bloodshot eyes, several strands of his mane and tail were loose, and his mane was in dire need of a trim. “Hey, what’s up?”

“Uh, you’re Mr. Print, are you?” the pegasus said, doing his best to shake off his surprise. “My name’s Hard Hat, and I’m here on behalf of the Lift Together Construction Crew. Me and a few of my crewmates were some of the ponies who, uh… well, chased you through town yesterday.”

Lapis raised an eyebrow, looking Hard Hat up and down. “Yep, you sure were. You were the whistler, right?”

“Oh. Yeah, that was me,” Hard Hat said, smiling and scratching the back of his neck with a hoof. “Yeah, Miss Pie made a habit of bringing us some refreshments on the hotter summer days, so when she stopped by to ask us a few favors, we didn’t really think about ‘em too hard.”

Lapis opened his mouth as if to respond, but instead, he heaved a quick sigh before speaking, his ears twitching briefly backward atop his head. “Well, I was wondering how she’d managed to recruit so many ponies into yesterday’s fiasco. Guess that answers that question.”

Hard Hat hesitantly nodded. “Yeah, she helps out around town a lot. But that doesn’t excuse what she did to you yesterday, and I guess that brings us to why I’m over here.”

Lapis cocked an eyebrow, and Hard Hat went on. “Me and the crew were thinking, and, well, we feel real bad for giving you so much of a fright as we did. We didn’t mean to chase you. Soon as everypony else started galloping, though, we didn’t know what else to do. So, uh…”

Hard Hat lifted the box of bolts off his back, then set them on the ground in front of himself. “We know you’re a repair-pony, and we figured you run through supplies pretty fast. So, well, here’s some of ours, by way of an apology. Hope it’s enough, at least for awhile.”

Lapis lifted the box off the porch, opened the lid, and looked inside - and, to Hard Hat’s relief, a smile came over his face. “Not gonna lie, looking at the box, I was worried you’d brought me cupcakes.”

Hard Hat’s eyes widened, and he shook his head vigorously. “Oh, no. Not after yesterday. None of us are giving Miss Pie our bits for at least a couple weeks - there’s a line, Mr. Print, and she crossed it.”

Lapis closed the box, levitating it back inside, then raised an eyebrow as a mud-stained scrap of confetti tumbled by the door. “Maybe don’t say that out loud, just in case. Still, thanks for the bolts - these should keep me covered for a long time.”

“Least we can do,” Hard Hat said, grinning at Lapis. “Anything else we can do for you, just let us know - the shop we work out of is just a couple doors down from yours, near the turn onto Cantering.”

Lapis chuckled. “You mind if I refer a few ponies to you, the next time something big blows through town?”

Hard Hat pretended to think a few moments. “Well, I’m sure we can fit in one or two more jobs. The extra bits won’t hurt, either.”

“Works for me,” Lapis said, offering his hoof. “See you then, Hard Hat.”

“See you, Lapis,” Hard Hat said, extending his own hoof in return. They shook hooves, and Hard Hat turned and headed down the road toward his jobsite, feeling greatly relieved.

Lapis shut his door as Hard Hat walked away, not feeling the slightest bit better about the party.

Sure, it was nice to know that Pinkie was facing some consequences for her insanity, and having a better idea of how she’d spun up a legion of supporters was… well, satisfying, though certainly not reassuring.

Unfortunately, for some reason, Lapis still couldn’t bring himself to open up the cursed book. It was sitting at the table inside his front room, in the exact spot where Lapis had left it sitting late the night before.

Lapis resumed his seat at the table. The night before, he’d sat there for a good two hours after Lyra and Bon Bon had left his house, trying to work up the nerve to open the book, and simultaneously trying to ignore the dust on the floor sweeping itself into neat piles in the corner, the rug repeatedly attempting to roll itself up, and the portrait of the mustached griffon making increasingly minute adjustments on the wall in an effort to hang perfectly straight.

Lapis was left with no choice but to face it - since the start of the party, his magic had been growing wilder, and he’d felt the toll it was taking on him ever since he woke up. Using his telekinesis was painful now, in the same throbbing-toothache way it had been after his Cascades, and he could barely stand for longer than a few minutes before his knees started shaking.

Looking through the book that Twilight had given him, the one on Cascades, had been… demeaning. Finding an explanation inside only made it worse. It turned out, when unicorns tried to suppress their unwanted emotions, it made their magic get …twitchy, so to speak, ready to cast a full-blown spell from the most primitive flickers of half-formed impulse. And, since emotion acted as a modifier, the aforementioned frustration only served to make those unintended spells less predictable, and more draining.

“I’m not going to take it out on Pinkie,” Lapis muttered aloud, staring down at the book. “I’m not going to risk dooming Equestria, wrecking Lyra and Bon Bon and everypony else’s lives, because of one crazy pony. I’ve got to be the bigger person here, I’m a mature adult, I can handle my own feelings-”

Lapis winced as a needle of pain shot through his horn, then watched, too exhausted to react, as every loose object in the storefront seemed to shift just slightly - the book on the table, the box of bolts on the counter, the piles of dust, all sliding slightly closer to being perfectly in-line with an invisible grid.

No, Lapis thought. No, I can’t. Not like this.

A heavy wooden thock from the back of the room caught Lapis’ attention, and he looked behind himself. The mimic was now sitting against the back wall of the room, once again in the shape of a wardrobe, and one of its doors had just swung open and bounced off the wall. Atop a small shelf inside sat Lapis’ kettle, a single mug, and a small teabag full of crushed leaves and tiny, dried, silvery-purple berries.

“Shimmerberry tea, huh?” Lapis muttered, then he levitated the items free of the wardrobe, wincing again as his horn twinged. “Not a bad plan. Thanks, uh… Chester.”

It’s as good a name as any, Lapis thought, as he filled the kettle and turned on the stove. It seems to like being a chest most of the time, and besides, it’s not like my own name makes much sense. I mean, come on, what does my job have to do with blueprints?

“So what are you, anyway?” Lapis asked, looking at Chester as he walked back into the front room. “You don’t do language, that much is obvious. You move and change shapes, but only when nopony’s looking, so either you can’t do otherwise, or you just don’t want to. I can fix you, which means you’re not alive, but you’re harder to repair than most other stuff, so… I guess that means you aren’t quite inanimate, either.”

Lapis blinked, and when he opened his eyes, Chester was a chest again, sitting directly in front of Lapis and angled to “face” him. It was the exact same position Chester had assumed the last time Lapis had tried seriously communicating with it, right down to the number of inches between them.

“Are you an enchanted object?” Lapis wondered aloud, knowing full well that Chester wasn’t going to respond. “What were you made to do? To follow somepony? To help them? To sit around and confuse them, what?”

Again, Chester didn’t move. Lapis sighed, then - simply because he couldn’t think of anything else to do, and at this point would welcome the distraction if Chester tried to eat him - he opened Chester’s lid, the hinges moving noiselessly as Lapis raised the heavy wooden lid with his hoof.

Instead of teeth, or anything resembling a mouth, or even some cursed artifact, Lapis found only a single piece of paper stuck to the bottom of the box. There was a small, simple smiley face drawn on that scrap of paper, and as Lapis looked at the face smiling back up at him, he realized - he’d drawn it, back in Amberhoof nearly a month ago, when he was first trying to figure out whether Chester was moving or not.

“Huh,” Lapis muttered. “You kept it.”

Chester sat as perfectly still and silent as a normal wooden chest ought to, continuing to smile up at Lapis with the face that he had made, that it had chosen to keep. Lapis sat just as quietly, and almost as still - though he had to blink as a small, hesitant smile slowly spread across his own face.

Then the kettle began to shriek from inside the kitchen, and Lapis got up to pour his tea. Half an hour later, he pinned a sign to his notice board and left.

At that moment, Mayor Mare would’ve loved a cup of tea, though she was never much for shimmerberry. The flavor was nice, but mana supplements just got her feeling jittery, and chamomile did a far better job of helping her relax.

And if the look of steely determination on Bon Bon’s face as she marched toward Mayor Mare’s desk in Town Hall was any sort of indicator, a chance to catch a breather was about to be something she sorely needed. “Good morning, Miss Bon, Miss Heartstrings. How can I help you?”

“You have three guesses,” Bon Bon said, her tone perfectly calm. “I’ll even give you a hint: ‘balloon.’ Mayor Mare, I’ve lived in this town for years now, and I’ve never once seen you overlook something of this magnitude. I have reason to believe that over the past two months, Pinkie Diane Pie has incurred a list of criminal charges that could include breaking and entering, stalking, harassment-”

“Unlicensed sale of goods at official events, defamation, and a list of littering offenses that covered no less than twelve pages, single-spaced and double-sided, before I saw fit to issue her a confetti permit,” Mayor Mare finished. “Rest assured that Pinkie has her own filing cabinet in the town archives.”

Lyra blinked. “…Defamation?”

“Announcing to the public that a grocer has ‘bright, sunny yellow teeth,’ while not technically meant in a negative light, could be perceived as slander on the quality of said grocer’s goods,” Mayor Mare said, rubbing her forehead with a hoof. “Luckily, the don- individual in question never saw fit to press charges, which brings us to my next point. Do you know, Bon Bon, how many ponies came to my office after the Parasprite Incident, demanding to know which pony was responsible for the Harmonic Cascade that straightened the extremely expensive curls right out of their mane?”

“No,” Bon Bon said. Why should I care, her flat stare asked.

“Well, it was just one,” Mayor Mare said, “and it wasn’t even an Element of Harmony. No, it was Mrs. Rich, and she wasn’t the least bit pleased to hear that I couldn’t tell her. As I recall, she claimed to have a prewritten suit which only needed a name, and that if she couldn’t get the name she was looking for, she was most certainly going to use mine filing for negligence instead. Now, of course it never came to that, and it obviously doesn’t justify my allowing yesterday’s spectacle, but it illustrates something I imagine you might have forgotten: in certain cases, legal action is simply too much trouble to pursue.”

Bon Bon didn’t even blink as Mayor Mare continued. “Mr. and Mrs. Cake approached me on the subject of Pinkie’s… dubious respect for the law years ago, and revealed to me a great deal about her spending habits. She has zero savings, Bon Bon. Zero.”

Lyra frowned, her brow scrunching in confusion. “What? Wait, why?”

“Nearly every bit she makes goes into purchasing either higher-quality ingredients for Sugarcube Corner, or else into more varieties of party supplies than I can imagine, much less list,” Mayor Mare said. “I’m not supposed to know any of this, by the way, so I’ll thank you not to mention it outside this room. But in short, beyond a smile and a pastry, there is very little indeed that Pinkie can offer by way of reparations.”

“So,” Mayor Mare sighed, setting her elbow on her desk and resting the side of her head on her hoof. “I could certainly assign her community service, but quite frankly, that would barely constitute any punishment at all, seeing as she already does several of the relevant services of her own volition. I could also levy a smaller fine or two for the smaller infringements, which would certainly be… punishing. However, it could quite possibly force acknowledgment of her more significant offenses, such as the stalking and harassment. Those have far larger penalties, which Pinkie would not be able to meet monetarily. And that would mean locking her away somewhere, if not for one little thing.”

Bon Bon groaned, shutting her eyes and rubbing her forehead with a hoof. “The Element of Laughter.”

“Precisely,” Mayor Mare said, staring down at the bills strewn across her desk. Goodness, what a start to the day this is. “In the topmost left drawer of this desk, I have a scroll written by Her Royal Highness. It explains, in very polite language, that the happiness and well-being of Twilight Sparkle and her friends constitute a matter of national security. And while our Princess doesn’t provide any specific orders, it does suggest, very politely, that I should find alternative solutions to corporal punishment wherever possible.” Mayor Mare sighed. “I’m sorry, Bon Bon. I really, truly am. I don’t think there’s anything I can do.”

“Can Lapis at least pursue a reining order?” Bon Bon asked, returning her hoof to the floor. “There’s got to be some way of keeping her from pulling this kind of stunt again. Lapis was terrified of this pony for two months!”

“A reining order would be theoretically possible,” Mayor Mare said, nodding. “That is, provided that Lapis has previously explained his grievances and wishes to Pinkie Pie in full…”

Bon Bon facehoofed. “Why hasn’t anypony overturned that yet?”

“…And that Pinkie Pie has subsequently disregarded his wishes, to the point where legal action is justifiably necessary,” Mayor Mare finished. “Of course, the explanation process would need to have a lawyer present, and Lapis would need to arrange and pay for the whole affair himself. Not to mention the question of whether Pinkie will follow the order in the first place.”

“So… what, we’re supposed to just sit on our hooves and do nothing?!” Bon Bon asked, throwing a hoof in the air.

“Well, no,” Mayor Mare said. She took a deep breath, then sat straight in her seat and fixed Bon Bon with a careful, unwavering stare. “No, what I’d suggest is that you either convince Lapis to actually pursue legal action-”

“Which he won’t,” Bon Bon said.

“-or, that you put this problem in front of somepony who Pinkie might actually listen to,” Mayor Mare finished. “And by that, I mean Pinkie’s friends, her family, or Princess Celestia, because Pinkie certainly doesn’t listen to me. Whatever you do, though, do it fast, because I’ve got an ache in my jaw that says somepony’s brewing up a storm of paperwork.”

When a pony in Ponyville mentioned “the forest,” most listeners immediately assumed they were talking about the Everfree Forest. This was typically a sound assumption, as the Everfree was the closest true forest to Ponyville, and the nearest alternative - the White Tail Woods - was either a day’s trot or an hour’s train ride to the west of Ponyville, which made it impractical to visit without rather a lot of planning.

So, when Lapis had written up an out-for-the-day notice and pinned it to the notice board, he’d made a point of not writing that he was going for a hike. He wasn’t in the mood to explain that no, actually, he wasn’t planning to go into the Everfree in his current state, and that his cup of shimmerberry tea already had him feeling much better than he looked. There was a sizable patch of woodland on the southwest side of Ponyville that was just dense enough to qualify as ‘forest,’ while still remaining separated from the Everfree proper by a deep, fast-flowing river. It was, in Lapis’ opinion, a great option for ponies who needed to wander a mile or so away from civilization and blow off some steam in privacy.

Granted, that patch of woodland also happened to include Fluttershy’s house, but Lapis knew where that was, and he’d be steering well clear of it. Even if Fluttershy had managed to stop Pinkie from inviting the Princesses, Lapis didn’t trust himself to keep calm around any of the Elements just then.

For similar reasons, Lapis left his house with his mask in his saddlebags, scanning the skies and streets of Ponyville for any sign of Twilight or her friends as he headed southwest. He wasn’t expecting any of the Elements to pursue him - hopefully, they no longer had reason to - but he couldn’t take any chances on being approached, either.

As soon as Lapis crossed the boundary of Ponyville and got under the cover of the canopy, however, he relaxed. It was a beautiful patch of forest, and the birdsong mingling with the sound of the cool autumn wind whispering through the leaves above was practically a lullaby. There were several rays of sunshine that managed to poke through the gaps in the green and scarlet foliage, but the sky was still almost completely obscured, and Lapis welcomed the chance to let his head hang instead of craning his neck to look for Rainbow Dash.

For half an hour or so, Lapis fell into the steady, mindless rhythm of putting two hooves in front of the others, making his way along a well-trodden, winding game trail that nonetheless took him steadily deeper into the forest. Eventually, Lapis stepped around a large, moss-covered gray rock and found himself at the edge of a decent-size, well-shaded clearing surrounded by densely-packed pine trees. A soft, rusty-orange carpet of fallen needles muffled Lapis’ hoofsteps as he made his way toward the center of the clearing, where a long, low slate boulder rose from the forest floor like a whale breaching for air.

Doesn’t look like there’s any hoofprints through here, Lapis thought, looking around the clearing as he took a seat on the boulder. I think I might be the only pony who’s been here for a while.

Lapis took a deep breath in, then shut his eyes and let it out, slowly letting himself slump forward as he did. This put his head a lot closer to the ground than he expected, and not for the first time, Lapis was struck by how different his pony anatomy was from his human body.

“I just want this mess to be over,” he muttered, and the whistling of the wind through the trees almost seemed to grow quieter. “Is that really too much to ask?”

Lapis opened his eyes, staring down at the pine needles between his front hooves. “I don’t want to be here,” he said, his voice rising as a warmth began to pulse within his chest. “I don’t want to be welcomed, I don’t want to be made at home, because this isn’t home. I don’t want to be forced into the spotlight, to say that everything is fine, because it’s not. I don’t want to be here, and I shouldn’t be here in the first place.”

The fallen needles on the ground began to rustle again, as Lapis raised his head. “Let me go home, dammit. Is it that hard to leave someone alone? Is it really that difficult to keep your head down, mind your own damn business, and let a guy go about his day without CHASING HIM THROUGH THE FUCKING STREET?!”

The warmth in Lapis’ chest had swelled to an uncomfortable, throbbing heat, and the needles were continuing to rustle around Lapis. He noticed all of this, noticed that he’d gotten to his hooves at some point, he just didn’t care. “I’ve got bills to pay, I’ve got an alicorn turning up in my dreams, and I’ve got my family probably going bankrupt because I was sucked through an interdimensional fucking portal. I am up to my eyeballs in bullshit already. I don’t need any more, and I sure as hell don’t need to spread it around to anypony here!”

Lapis glared up at the canopy as he began to concentrate, shutting his eyes against the the pine needles swirling around him, their tips faintly gleaming with candle-yellow light as he summoned his magic. “So take your stalker friends…”

Let the winds pull all together, keep them spinning like a top-

“Take your hot air balloon…”

-Keep them churning tighter, faster, don’t let the spinning stop-

“Take your whole bubblegum-colored, batshit-crazy ass…”

-Then throw them all apart, all together with a pop-

“And FUCK OFF!”

The incantation finished, and Lapis felt his mana wrench itself free of his horn as his spell went off ten feet above his head. There was a pop like a firework going off, and Lapis’ knees shivered and bent as a wall of wind washed down over him from above.

Huh, Lapis thought, as the wind howling in his ears died down. That spell… was more intense than I meant it to be.

The incantation had been for the ‘pop’ spell, the same one that Lapis’ smithing bracelet used to keep him from burning his hooves on his forge. It wasn’t supposed to have as dramatic of a drain as it just had, and it certainly wasn’t supposed to be that loud.

Lapis opened his eyes, looking around, half-expecting to see the aftermath of a full-blown magic explosion. To his relief, nothing like that seemed to have taken place - the clearing seemed almost completely unchanged, save for a few patches of disturbed pine needles near the ground. That didn’t stop Lapis from continuing to look around as he tried and failed to get up off his knees, to peer into every patch of shadow and swaying undergrowth.

He waited. For some pony to pop out of the bushes and ask whether he was doing alright, to ask what he’d meant by all that, for them to gallop away instead. For some drooling monster to stalk out of the brush while he was too drained to run away, for a Princess to descend from above, serene and smug and demanding he tell them everything. He felt that it was going to happen, was sure that it had to.

Lapis waited for it all to fall apart, and the forest carried on as it always had.

“Gone,” Bon Bon muttered, staring at Lapis’ notice board. “Why am I not surprised?”

“No, it’s okay - perfect, actually,” Lyra said, stepping past Bon Bon and levitating a few request slips off his board. “Alright, so, Lapis. He lies. Like, a lot, or else he just doesn’t say what he means. You know how many times you asked Lapis why he was avoiding Pinkie?”

“I lost count, actually.”

Lyra nodded. “And what’d it take for him to spill?”

Bon Bon frowned, glancing over at Lyra. “If you’re about to suggest we put him back in Ponyville General, then you and I are going to have some words, Lyra.”

“Wait, what?” Lyra asked, her ears flicking back as she looked at Bon Bon. “No! No, it took you visiting him in Ponyville General- okay, let me try this another way. A few days after the whole Nightmare Moon thing, we got Lapis a rug, remember?”

“A rug, and most of the furniture he owns,” Bon Bon said, following Lyra as she turned down the street from his house.

“Exactly,” Lyra said, smiling. “He still has that Griffon portrait in his living room. And, actually, I just realized - when did he tell us where his house was?”

“Not until after we were already inside of it,” Bon Bon said.

“Exactly,” Lyra said, nodding and gesturing for Bon Bon to continue. “And why were we in there?”

“To save him from the Nightmare thing,” Bon Bon said, as Lyra grinned triumphantly. “Lyra, is there a point to all this?”

“Yeah,” Lyra said, turning back down the road. “My point is, we trust Lapis, and he trusts us. But, we don’t trust everything that Lapis says. We can’t. He knows that, we know it, and… well, I think he knows we know, but I don’t know for sure?”

Bon Bon groaned, rubbing her forehead with a hoof. “Lyra…”

“Almost there, I promise,” Lyra said. “So, why do we trust Lapis, even some of the time? How do we know he’s a good pony?”

Bon Bon blinked, then stared at Lyra. “I’m sorry, what?”

Lyra ground to a halt. “…Okay, now that I say that out loud, I see how terrible it sounds. Um… I meant it in good faith? We know Lapis is a good pony, we have reasons to trust him, I’m just asking you what they are.”

Bon Bon sighed. “…Well, during the Nightmare thing, Lapis galloped straight toward everything dangerous that wound up in front of him, all night long. He got that book to Twilight, he saved Big Mac from the cauldron and Hot Cocoa from the Nightmare, and he kept the Nightmare from getting away. He tried to help with the snacks at your concert, he helped Big Mac with the apple harvest…”

“Right, exactly,” Lyra said. “And Lapis’ biggest tell, whenever he’s lying about anything, is that he tries to stop his ears from flopping back. But he can’t. Not completely.”

Lyra grinned, glancing down at the stack of order slips and then hanging a left. “When he lies, he lies with words. He’s been honest…”

“With his actions,” Bon Bon said, her eyes widening.

Lyra nodded, trotting up to the front door of a nearby house, then turning to face Bon Bon. “You’re getting it now, right? We’ve been telling Lapis that we’re his friends, that he can trust us not to freak out about whatever he’s dealing with. But, we can’t trust what he says, so how can he trust what we say?”

Lyra knocked on the door of the house, still speaking to Bon Bon. “So what I’m thinking is, maybe we try something else. Maybe, we show Lapis that he can trust us, the same way he’s shown us we can trust him.”

The door opened, and an enormously muscular pegasus stallion poked his head through the doorway. Lyra grinned at Bon Bon one more time, then turned to the pegasus. “Hi! My name’s Lyra Heartstrings, and this is Bon Bon! I heard you’ve got a bench you need repaired?”

Rarity had been expecting to run into any number of four other ponies, if she ran into anypony at all on her way to Sugarcube Corner. Macintosh Apple was not one of them, but she most certainly welcomed the surprise.

“Big Mac!” Rarity announced, as she trotted toward him. “Well, my goodness, darling, whatever brings you here? Picking up a surprise for somepony, are we?”

“Nope,” Big Mac said, shaking his head, and at once Rarity began to look over the details. Faint crease of the brow, some tension around the mouth and eyes, decidedly somber tone. Slightly bowed knees, too - no trembling, so not fatigue, but almost as if he’s bracing for a blow. Dear me, he does mean business, doesn’t he?

“Ah,” she said aloud. “In that case, I take it here you’re also here about yesterday’s little… undertaking, let’s call it?”

Big Mac cocked an eyebrow, then nodded. “E-yup. Though, Ah’m not sure Ah’d call it ‘little.’”

Polite tone, but ears tipped back, just a little. Indignant, but perhaps not with me. Rarity smiled, letting a little of her weariness show. “Then I’d say you’ve gotten the crux of the issue quite well in mind. Truth be told, I’m afraid I may have lost a little sleep considering how to approach Pinkie about her, ah, fixation.”

Big Mac shook his head. “Ah just can’t understand why she’d go to so much effort. And Ah know Lapis said it was alright, but… well, for some reason Ah ain’t so sure.”

Worry, plain as day. No body language need, it's written all over his face. “I believe I know just what you mean, darling,” Rarity said, nodding. “I’ve garbed enough masquerades to know a mask when I see one, and neither Mr. Print nor Pinkie were being quite honest yesterday afternoon.”

Now, it was Big Mac’s turn to be surprised, as he cocked his head a little and frowned. “…Pinkie?”

“Oh, yes, dear,” Rarity said, nodding. “I’ve known Pinkie for years, and while I can’t claim that she and self-restraint are terribly well-acquainted, she doesn’t normally indulge quite so heavily in her punch blend. And of course, there’s the matter of Mr. Print. The look on the poor unicorn’s face when Applejack invited him over for dinner… well, I’ve no idea what nerve she might have struck, but she struck it hard.”

This last line was a lie - Rarity knew precisely which nerve Applejack had struck - but Rarity meant it well. Offering to help Lapis feel at home, right after he’d already mentioned his intent to return to Amareica, was frankly a risky enough move that Rarity didn’t wish to discredit Applejack by pointing it out.

Big Mac sighed, then set his hoof on the door to Sugarcube Corner. “Ah’m afraid Ah may have some idea, but we’d best save it ‘till later. Pinkie ain’t gonna have a word with herself.”

“I think perhaps you underestimate her, darling,” Rarity said, stepping into the bakery as Big Mac pushed open the door. “But yes, let’s take this one step at a time. Pinkie, dear, are you here?”

The storefront of Sugarcube Corner was deserted, but after a second or two, Carrot Cake stuck his head through the doorway that led to the kitchen, speaking in a low voice. “Well, if it isn’t Rarity and Big Macintosh! How are ya?”

“Doing quite well, Carrot Cake, and hoping you’re doing the same,” Rarity said, stepping up to the counter. “As much as we’d love to catch up, we were hoping to speak to Pinkie Pie. Is she in at the moment?”

“Oh, she’s just upstairs,” Carrot Cake murmured, smiling. “She’s been up there ever since she grabbed breakfast earlier. Just head up the stairs around that way. And don’t mind me, either, I can’t really be out of the kitchen right now. I’ve got a wedding cake that’s trying to rise, and I’ve gotta keep the kitchen quiet, or else it might collapse!”

“Ah,” Rarity said, lowering her voice. “Well, in that case, we’ll leave you to it. Thank you, Carrot Cake, and good luck with the baking!”

“Thanks!” Carrot Cake replied, smiling and waving to Big Mac as Rarity made her way toward the staircase, then advanced toward Pinkie Pie’s bedroom.

“…Pinkie Pie?” Rarity called, ascending the last few steps of the spiral staircase that led into the top room of Sugarcube Corner’s cupcake-shaped tower. “It’s Rarity and Big Mac. We wanted to talk with you about some… thing…”

Pinkie Pie’s bedroom was an open and roughly cylindrical room, with yellow-brownish walls broken up by candy-cane-striped pillars. The section where Rarity and Big Mac stood now was overlooked by a large, ring-shaped balcony in the higher level of the room, and had a gray stone hearth built into one wall. The hearth wasn’t lit just then, which was a very sensible decision in Rarity’s opinion - with all the slips of scribbled-on paper and colorful thread taped and tacked across the walls, any kind of open flame seemed as likely as not to suddenly transform Pinkie’s tower into an oversized candle atop the Bakery.

It wasn’t the sight of all the paper that stunned Rarity out of her sentence, however. No, that honor was won by what was on the paper. Half a section of wall was taken up by a massive, crayon-drawn map of Ponyville, several streets marked off with lines of bright pink string. Those lines of string in turn formed a sprawling, criss-crossing spiderweb across a spread of hastily-written notes, which read things like ‘7 AM earliest, 10 AM latest’ and ‘Try introducing to Lonely Road, both from out of town’.

Pinkie stood at the opposite end of the room from the staircase, pulling down her web and stuffing it into a box as if it were the most natural thing in the world. “Hey, Rarity! Hey, Big Mac! You’re just in time, I’ll be done with all this in just a minute or two. What was it you needed?”

“Uh…” Rarity said, unable to tear her eyes away from the sprawl of notes. “Right! Well, Pinkie Pie, darling, Big Mac and I were discussing yesterday’s party, and-”

“Whoa, no-no-no-no-no,” Pinkie said, shaking her head. “That wasn’t a party, it was a brunch!”

“It weren’t neither,” Big Mac began, stepping forward. “That was a full-blown spectacle, Pinkie Pie, and-”

“Pinkie,” Rarity said, levitating one of the fallen notes up to her side and skimming it over - it was a list of names, ponies in Ponyville, labeled ‘Maybe-Possibly-Kinda-Friends for Lapis Print.’ “You didn’t make all this preparing for Lapis’ brunch, did you?”

“Sure did!” Pinkie chirped, beaming, then she bounced back over to a wall and began to pull down another section. “He was being super-duper sneaky, so I had to be super-duper-looper careful to make sure I was going to catch him! Did you know he can just disappear, without using any magic or anything? Because it took me forever to figure out he could, and I still don’t know how he does it! One second, he’s right in front of you galloping away, and then he goes around a corner and POOF!”

Pinkie paused, tapping her chin with her hoof. “Well, actually, there isn’t a poof, or even just a puff. There’s just nopony there but rain barrels!”

Rarity felt her jaw drop as Big Mac grunted beside her. “Well, Ah guess Lapis really wasn’t kiddin’ about you and Twilight huntin’ around for him.”

“Pinkie,” Rarity said, taking a deep breath and leaning forward. “What, in all of Equestria, could possibly motivate you to give this poor stallion so much trouble?”

“Uh, trouble?” Pinkie said, and her smile didn’t fool Rarity for a second - ears cocking back, leaning away from me, glancing toward the stairwell, she does NOT want to have this conversation, but this has clearly gone too far, for too long. “I just threw him a welcome brunch, Rarity. Sure, there were a few extra steps-”

“Like cuttin’ off all his exits ahead of time, giving him a ‘nudge in the right direction’ with a crowd of thirty-some-odd ponies, and leaving him a fake way out in case he tries to escape?” Big Mac asked, reading down a checklist he’d pulled off the wall.

“Well, yeah, but if he wasn’t so darn sneaky, then none of that would’ve happened!” Pinkie said, her eyes growing wider as the smile began to leave her face. “He managed to dodge his invitation for two whole months, Rarity. Nopony’s ever done that before, and two months is a really, really long time-”

“Long enough, darling, that I would’ve taken the hint,” Rarity said, “and left Lapis Print alone.”

And then, quite suddenly, Pinkie Pie jolted stiff, sucking in a quick breath and lurching to her full height. Rarity was so stunned by the sudden change that it took her several seconds to recognize it for anger. “Hey, I didn’t know that Lapis was really friends with Lyra and Bon Bon until we met them at the party, okay? They never mentioned him to me! Not even once! For all I knew, I was the only pony in Ponyville who really cared that he was here, for two months. And sure, he was sneaky, and he never seemed happy to see me, but I just couldn’t leave him alone. Because as long as my name is Pinkie Pie, there’s one thing I’ll never, ever do, and that’s leave somepony lonely!”

Pinkie sat down, seeming to deflate a little, but she lifted her head to meet Rarity’s gaze. “I know yesterday was too much. I know it was more than a brunch, I know I should’ve done something smaller, and I’m really worried about how I’m going to make up with Fluttershy and Twilight about all this. I just had to make sure he knew somepony cared, to make sure that a lot of ponies cared. Two months is a long time to be lonely, and nopony should be lonely.”

Pinkie glanced out the nearest window, toward one of the roads that led out of Ponyville. “Nopony should ever be lonely. Not even for a little while.”

Hm, Rarity thought, exchanging a look with Big Mac as Pinkie started staring at the floor. I think I may, perhaps, have struck a nerve myself.

“Well,” Big Mac said, his voice low, “that may help explain yesterday. But it sure don’t excuse it.”

“No,” Rarity said, looking back toward Pinkie Pie. “No, I don’t quite think it does.”

In fact, this makes it rather a lot worse, Rarity thought, as she and Big Mac turned back toward the slumped Pinkie Pie. It means making sure Pinkie doesn’t do this again will be quite a bit more difficult.

Still, we must try. For the good of Ponyville, and for the good of everypony in it, yesterday’s fiasco must never again take place. Rarity met Pinkie’s eyes, and began to formulate her plan of attack.

“…And that’s every request on the board,” Lyra said, swiping her hoof across her brow as she threw the last slip in the trash. “Okay, I think I get why Lapis always looks so tired now.”

Bon Bon paused midway through pulling a splinter out of her hoof to shoot Lyra a flat look. “No kidding. Now, imagine having to do all that, and being the pony who has to hold everything still while somepony else hems and haws over where to use the hammer, for fifteen minutes. Per job.”

“Oh.” Lyra giggled nervously as Bon Bon took the splinter between her teeth and pulled it free. “Sorry, BB. You wanna drop by somewhere for a refresher?”

“Do we have time?” Bon Bon asked, starting down the street. “When is Lapis going to get back, anyway? Wherever he is, he’s been gone a long time-”

“I have?” a voice asked, and Bon Bon flinched in place. “I only thought I was out for a few hours. What’re you two doing, anyway?”

“Lapis!” Bon Bon said, turning to face the unicorn in question. “Sweet Celestia, you startled me. Where’d you…”

Lapis looked terrible. His mane was a frazzled mess, the bags under his eyes were nearly purple, and as Bon Bon watched, he seemed to sway slightly in place. Even his coat was ruffled in a few places, and there were loose pine needles stuck to his hooves.

“…go?” Bon Bon finished. Well, even if he doesn’t tell us anything, it’s a good thing we took care of his work today.

“Went for a hike,” Lapis said, stifling a small yawn. He paused, one of his hooves slipping on the street as the yawn suddenly grew into a far larger one. “Had to blow off some steam. …What’s wrong?” he added, glancing between Bon Bon and Lyra. “Is there something on my face?”

“Uh,” Lyra said, her brow furrowing. “Lapis, did you get any sleep last night? Because… well, don’t take this the wrong way, but you look like a zombie-pony.”

Lapis blinked, then grimaced and tried to smooth out his mane with a hoof. “Yeah, I’m good. Had some magic issues, I think they’re fixed now. Not having a Cascade again if I can help it.”

Magic issues? Bon Bon exchanged a look with Lyra, then turned back to Lapis. “…Alright then. When was the last time you ate?”

Lapis frowned. “Uh, breakfast…” He glanced up at the mid-afternoon sky, squinting up at the sun. “Oh. Well, I guess I’m having a late lunch today.”

“Yes, you are,” Bon Bon said, stepping behind Lapis and hooking a hoof around the back of his neck. “Now."

“Right now?” Lapis asked, his brow furrowed in confusion.

“Right now,” Lyra replied. “You really don’t look good, Lapis. You need some food.”

“Food sounds good,” Lapis admitted. “Bon Bon, you can take your hoof off my neck, I can walk just fine. Where are we going?”

“The Corner…” Lyra began. “…Uh, I’m not sure. Bon Bon, you have any ideas?”

Lapis held up a hoof before Bon Bon could answer. “I could go for the Corner Cafe, actually. You think they’re still serving coffee?”

“You need rest, not caffeine,” Bon Bon said, glaring at Lapis as the three of them started toward the site of the brunch. “If you order so much as a mug of half-caf, I’ll knock it out of your hooves.”

“Joke’s on you, I’ll probably straighten your mane out again,” Lapis muttered. “And I’m not getting any rest yet, I’ve still got work to do.”

“No you don’t,” Lyra chimed, grinning over at Lapis. “Me and Bon Bon took care of it for you.”

“Oh, alright. Thanks,” Lapis said, grinning back at her. “…Wait, what?”

“We did your job,” Bon Bon said, before Lyra could speak. “We’ll explain after we get there.”

The Corner Cafe was only half an hour away from closing by the time that Lapis, Lyra, and Bon Bon arrived. Bon Bon pushed the door open, just in time to see Hot Cocoa drop a broom that she’d been using to pull a leftover streamer down from a corner of the room. The broom hit the table, and its head promptly snapped off its handle, prompting Hot Cocoa to groan in frustration.

“We’ll find our own table,” Bon Bon said, as Hot Cocoa shot a glare in their direction. As they passed by, Lapis looked down at the broom, then picked up its pieces and pressed them back together - and, one flash of light later, the broom was good as new.

“Here you go,” Lapis said, passing the broom back to Hot Cocoa as he levitated the streamer down from the wall. “No charge. And… sorry, about everything you had to deal with yesterday.”

“Still dealing with it today,” Hot Cocoa grumbled, taking in Lapis’ sorry state. “…And it’s not your fault, but thanks. You want the usual?”

“The usual sounds great,” Lapis said, an exhausted smile crossing his face.

“The usual, without the coffee,” Bon Bon added. “For all three of us, please.”

“Coming right up,” Hot Cocoa said, looking over Lapis one more time before she turned and headed for the kitchen, tucking the broom under her wing. Lyra, Lapis, and Bon Bon took the opportunity to file into their usual booth near a window, Bon Bon glancing around the restaurant for any fellow patrons. To her surprise, the Cafe was basically deserted - as she watched, the only other ponies in the room finished their meals and left.

“So, what’s all this about doing my job?” Lapis asked, looking up at Bon Bon as he stifled another yawn.

Bon Bon looked at Lyra, who cleared her throat and spoke. “Okay, so… yesterday was rough.”

“Yep,” Lapis said.

“…Really rough.”

“Yep.”

“Like, I-was-expecting-to-stop-another-Cascade rough,” Lyra said, leaning forward. “And, well, you just kinda sat there and took it.”

“Yeah,” Lapis sighed, rubbing the side of his forehead with a hoof. “Yeah, I did.”

“And the way we see it,” Bon Bon said, “that means there’s something going on.”

Lapis froze, then set his hoof down, his eyes growing just a touch more alert as the gears began to spin inside his head. “Or maybe I just wanted to get the whole mess over with as painlessly as possible. What’s your point?”

“There isn’t one,” Lyra said, shaking her head. “Lapis, whatever your reasons, you needed some rest after yesterday, and… well, we figured we’d take care of it, whether whatever is going on or not. So, me and Bon Bon took the requests off your board, and we took care of them, as best as we could.”

“If Yellow Petal notices the dent in her wall, that’s my fault,” Bon Bon added. “Any supplies you buy are on me.”

Lapis blinked, and though the fatigue on his face didn’t fade, his shoulders definitely relaxed by an inch or so. Lyra, if this actually works…

“Listen, if you can’t tell us what’s happening,” Lyra said, “that’s okay.”

Lyra?!

“We know something’s eating at you,” Lyra said, “and whatever it is, it’s fine if you can’t tell us. Just… let us know how we can help, and we’ll do it, okay? We know you can do it, we just don’t want to see you hurt yourself trying.”

Lapis opened his mouth, closed it, then looked back at Lyra, who smiled. He turned to Bon Bon, who took a deep breath, then nodded.

“I…” Lapis began. “Thank you, both of you. That’s…” He sniffed, then cleared his throat as he stared down at the table. “Thanks.”

“Least we can do,” Lyra said, grinning. Lapis hesitated, then opened his mouth to speak - just as Hot Cocoa walked over to their table, bearing three plates and a trio of steaming mugs.

“I thought we didn’t order any coffee,” Bon Bon said, as Hot Cocoa dished out their food.

“It’s cocoa,” Hot Cocoa said. “On the house, as thanks for the broom.”

Lapis smiled, levitating his own mug across the table. “Hot Cocoa, come on, I told you there was no charge.”

“Just shut up and drink it,” Hot Cocoa said, smirking over at Lapis. “Slowly. And get some rest afterward, you look like you lost a fight with a ditch.”

Lapis shook his head as Hot Cocoa turned and walked away, then looked over at Bon Bon. “I don’t look that bad, do I?”

“You do,” Bon Bon said, as the sound of dishes being washed began to faintly echo out of the Cafe’s kitchen. “Your mane needs a trim, and your coat could use some serious shampoo.”

“Okay, I guess it’s been a while since I got it cut,” Lapis said, levitating his mug upward. He paused with his mug an inch away from his lips - then, he sighed, and set the mug down, looking around the room before leaning across the table and speaking in a low voice. “…Listen, I can’t tell you much, but I’ll share what I can. You two deserve that, and maybe you always did, so. What do you know about prophecies?”

Oh. Great. Well, here we go, I guess. Bon Bon glanced at Lyra, expecting a disappointed frown, but found her rubbing her chin with a hoof instead. “Uh, I know they exist sometimes. I think Nightmare Moon’s return was foretold by one?”

“I think that’s right,” Lapis said, then he sighed. “And… yeah, that’s the problem. The thing is, I never really saw any prophecies. But my younger sister… well, she did.”

“Your sister saw a prophecy,” Bon Bon repeated, looking Lapis straight in his face. That can’t be right.

Lapis shrugged. “I guess so. I mean, I don’t think she or I ever thought of it like anything more than a story, but then I ended up here, and… the places, the names, the big events, they’re one-to-one. Nightmare Moon, the bunny stampede, the star-bear, the Parasprites, everything. Everything big. Twilight and her friends are going to save Equestria, over and over and over again. Amanda knew every detail, she knew it all like the back of her- hoof, but I just kind of smiled and nodded whenever she told me about it. And then I wind up here, where suddenly it all matters.”

Lapis sighed, resting his head on his hoof. “I can’t tell you a lot, because I don’t want to risk changing anything. But the next big thing I can remember is that some chimera-god-goat thing breaks out of a statue and causes havoc, until Twilight and her friends eventually turn it back into stone with the Elements of Harmony.”

Bon Bon’s eyes snapped open. Discord? Lapis shouldn’t know that. Nopony outside of the Princess’ castle or S.M.I.L.E. should know how Discord is imprisoned.

Oh, sweet Celestia. Lapis isn’t lying, is he?

“There’ll probably be more stuff that happens between now and then, though,” Lapis was saying, and the behavior of Pinkie Pie suddenly became the very least of Bon Bon’s concerns. “And the whole goat-demon thing shouldn’t happen for a while. At least not until after this winter. And like I said, according to prophecy, everything should work out just fine. Which brings me to problem number two…”

Lapis looked Bon Bon right in the eyes, a tight grimace locked into position on his face. “Me. There’s nothing about me in the prophecy, which could mean two things. Option one, which I’m hoping for, is that I’m not important enough to mention. And option two, which I’m planning for…”

Lapis swallowed, then stared down at the table. “Option two is that I’m not supposed to exist. That I’m a rogue element, a monkey-wrench. And that if I do the wrong thing at the wrong time, if I make a big enough impact on any of the wrong dozen or so ponies, then I will alter the future. Maybe even destroy it.”

“…Ooh,” Lyra said, her eyes widening. “So that’s why you didn’t freak out about the party! You wanted Twilight and her friends to get it over with, and then forget about you-”

“Oh, hayseeds,” Bon Bon breathed.

Lapis paused, looking up. “What?”

Bon Bon slowly raised a hoof to the side of her head. “Lapis, if what you’re saying is true, then this explains a lot of stuff that I wish it didn’t. You really, really should’ve told somepony sooner.”

Lapis shook his head, exhaustion rising to the forefront of his face. “Would you have believed it?”

“Maybe I would’ve!” Bon Bon snapped, slamming her hoof onto the table. Then she remembered that Hot Cocoa was still in the kitchen, and felt heat rise to her face as she lowered her voice. “And even if I didn’t, maybe you should’ve told me anyway. Your first bucking Cascade should’ve shown you that much. Lapis, has it ever occurred to you, even once, that believing you’re not supposed to exist might start messing with your head?!”

Lapis’ face scrunched in complete bewilderment, his brow furrowing deeply enough to plant daisies in. “…What?”

“Let’s start with the Summer Sun Celebration,” Bon Bon said. “You put yourself in danger, oh, about four times that evening. You ran off after Nightmare Moon’s speech, alone, then you got under the cooking pot, then you take off toward the Nightmare-thing that went after Hot Cocoa, and then Lyra and I find you losing a fight with the whole entire Nightmare.”

“…Well, the Nightmare went after me,” Lapis began, but Bon Bon cut him off. “And just today, you abandon your job without telling anypony, and wander off into the woods alone when you know your magic is on the fritz. Not to mention that you went hunting for nothing in particular inside the Everfree Forest, with nopony to help you but Zecora and Nikki.”

Lapis opened his mouth, and Bon Bon pressed on. “Lapis, look at what happened yesterday. Look at how long Pinkie Pie spent trying to hunt you down, how much effort she and her friends put into finding a pony they barely ever saw! You are here, like it or not, and they know it. If you disappear again, that will have a bigger impact on them, and on Ponyville, than you could ever guess. That means you need to stop putting yourself in situations where you might disappear. Is. That. Clear?”

Lapis gaped. “…You think I’m getting into trouble on purpose?!”

“I think you sure aren’t avoiding trouble,” Bon Bon replied. “I think you’re trying to carry a lot more than you can bear alone, enough that anypony would want to set it aside. And I’m glad you decided to share the burden, instead. So let’s figure this out, together.”

Bon Bon exhaled a quick breath, then looked over to Lyra. “Anything you want to add, before we get started?”

Lyra glanced at Lapis, who was gazing, stunned, at the surface of the table, his mouth moving silently as his ears twitched atop his head. “Um… well, Lapis, I’m super glad you’ve decided to let us know what’s going on. And I really appreciate that you were trying to protect us-”

Lyra shot Bon Bon a look, then continued. “-by not saying anything. So don’t feel bad about keeping quiet, okay? You did your best, and that’s all anypony could’ve asked of you.”

…Oh, Bon Bon thought, and she resisted the urge to facehoof as she realized her mistake. Right. He was being protective, just as much as bucking reckless. …Sweet Celestia, I’m glad I didn’t go for that Pony Resources position. I’d be terrible.

Lapis blinked a few times, then seemed to snap out of his trance as he looked up from the table. “Right. Right, yeah. Thanks, Lyra.”

“Good,” Bon Bon said, taking a deep breath. “So, as far as the prophecy thing goes… I have no idea what to make of that, and I’m not sure I should. You said that as long as you aren’t involved, everything works out?”

Lapis nodded, and Bon Bon resumed. “Great. And you also said Twilight and her friends were involved. Anypony else we should know about?”

“Definitely Princess Celestia,” Lapis said. “Princess Luna, too. Though… not as much, I think. Oh, and Celestia’s… uh, niece, I think? Another princess?”

“Princess Mi Amore Cadenza,” Bon Bon said. “And is she a major player? Can you risk getting near her, informing her at all?”

Lapis’ eyes shot wide open, and he shook his head, hard. “Absolutely fu- uh, no.”

Lyra giggled. “Lapis, you’re allowed to swear. It’s okay if you use funny words, we already know you were raised by griffons.”

“Oh. Right.” Lapis chuckled, then looked Bon Bon in the face. “Well, uh, not her. Absolutely fucking not, at least not until after, uh… some stuff happens, later on.”

“Right,” Bon Bon sighed, rubbing her forehead with a hoof. “Well, then unless you’re willing to take a risk on Princess Luna, that rules out telling every alicorn in Equestria. Which is unfortunate, considering Their Royal Highnesses Celestia and Luna have the most experience with prophecy, by far, of anypony in Equestria.”

“Luna,” Lapis said, grimacing. “Yeah. I should probably mention, she’s started turning up in my dreams.”

“Has she?” Bon Bon said, frowning. “Well, that’s probably because it’s her job, along with moving the moon. She protects ponies from their nightmares…”

Bon Bon stopped, then double-facehoofed, resting her elbows on the table as something occured to her. “Lapis, don’t tell me you’ve been trying to avoid her the same way you tried to dodge Pinkie and Twilight.”

“…Uh,” Lapis said.

Bon Bon groaned into her hooves. “…You’ve outdone yourself. Congratulations.” Without looking up, Bon Bon waved a hoof vaguely in Lyra’s direction. “Lyra, please. Please, help me, before I say something mean to our friend.”

“Oh. Um…” Lyra cleared her throat. “I mean, you’ve decided to avoid Twilight and her friends like a normal pony now, right? Maybe you could just do the same thing for Princess Luna. Just… y’know, talk to her, figure out what she wants, do that, and then let everything be okay?”

Bon Bon picked her head up, taking another deep breath. “That seems like a good idea to me. My guess is that she wants to make the nightmares stop.”

“…Then talking to her won’t work,” Lapis said, grimacing down at the table. “Not unless she can magic my debt away, somehow.”

Bon Bon and Lyra exchanged a glance.

Slowly, Lapis frowned, then looked up. “…What?”

“Well,” Lyra said, “what if, maybe, she can?”

Lapis opened his mouth, then paused, and Lyra continued. “I mean, she is an alicorn, so her magic power is off the charts. And, y’know, she’s also a princess, so she’s super-rich. If anypony could find a way to send you back home with a great big chest of gold, it would kinda have to be her or Celestia, right? Not that I don’t think you could do it,” Lyra added, hastily waving her hooves. “I’m sure you’ve been making huge progress toward finding out where Amareica is. I just think it might be a lot faster if you had, y’know, an alicorn on your side.”

“And, as far as ponies to avoid go, Princess Luna isn’t the most unreasonable,” Bon Bon admitted. “Considering that she was possessed by a Nightmare until this summer, you have an alibi if she asks why you were trying to steer clear. Honestly, she may not even ask.”

“Ooh!” Lyra added, a smile growing on her face. “And, if she does figure out a way to get you back, then you’ll probably have time to make sure you officially move out, instead of just mysteriously disappearing!”

“I think you should get in contact,” Bon Bon finished, nodding. “It’ll be better than avoiding her, by a mile. Besides, if you want to get in contact with somepony who has direct authority over Twilight and her friends, who can make sure yesterday doesn’t happen again without implicating you… well, there’s only one pony who can guarantee that, and Princess Luna is her sister.”

Lapis’ brow furrowed, his eyes narrowing in thought, and Bon Bon swallowed. Well, he’s considering it, but if the stakes are on the level of Discord…

“Listen,” she said, and Lapis looked up to meet her gaze. “At the end of the day, you’re the pony with the prophecy, so it’s your call. If you can’t tell Princess Luna anything about the future, then don’t. But just talking to her, letting her help you go home… I think it’s safe, but you have to make the call.”

Slowly, Lapis nodded. “I’ll… I’ll think about it.”

“Good,” Bon Bon said, and she allowed herself to smile a little. “Now, let’s drink our cocoa before it gets as cold as our eggs.”

“Agreed,” Lapis said, grinning with relief and raising his mug to his lips. His eyes shot open, and he lowered his mug so quickly that he left a whipped-cream mustache on his upper lip. “Huh. Cinnamon. That… works a lot better than I thought it would, plus it’s still hot.”

“What, you thought Hot Cocoa had that mug on her flank for show?” Lyra giggled, taking a sip from her own cup. “Ooh! Bon Bon, that reminds me, are we doing cinnamon drops again this winter?”

“Cinnamon drops?” Lapis asked, frowning. "I've never heard of those."

“If it gets cold fast,” Bon Bon said to Lyra, before turning to Lapis. “They're good. Trust me, they warm you right up.”

Lapis examined his mug, and a small, hesitant smile spread across his face. “…Yeah. Yeah, I bet they do.”

Then, slowly, he took a longer drink of cocoa.

As Lapis sat down at his workbench in the basement, Nikki perched atop his head, he was surprised to realize that he felt… good. Better than he had in weeks, actually. Whether it was because of the long, hot shower he’d just taken, his magic’s return to normal following his venting session in the woods, or his partial revelation to Bon Bon and Lyra, he didn’t know.

Well, that’s a lie, Lapis thought, as he set the cursed book down on the workbench and opened it. It’s all of them. Yeah, I’m not sure whether approaching Luna is a good idea yet; yeah, I don’t know why Luna recently stopped showing up in my dreams anyway; and yeah, there’s no way I could’ve told Lyra and Bon Bon that the ‘prophecy’ was really a TV show, but… at least they understand what’s at stake. They know why it took me so long.

I still can’t believe they actually did my job. Lapis smiled, shaking his head slightly. God, every single request on my board. How long did it take them?

Nikki cooed, shooting Lapis a confused look over the top of his head. Lapis blinked, then sniffed and wiped his eyes. “Nothing. Don’t worry about it.”

Nikki smirked, and Lapis cleared his throat as he opened the cursed book, turned to the riddle, and picked up his pencil, staring down at the three lines on the page: Imagine thou art enclosed within a cell of stone. Imagine thy magic sealed away, and any doors, windows, drains, and furniture are absent all. How dost thou escape?

“I’m guessing ‘jackhammer’ isn’t the correct answer,” Lapis muttered, Nikki fluttering down to the workbench’s surface. “No doors, no windows, no drains, no furniture… well, they don’t mention skylights. Though, how would I get to it?”

Lapis picked up his pencil, cocking his head, then glanced at Nikki. “Hey, do ladders count as furniture?”

Nikki shrugged. Lapis lowered the pencil to the page, and wrote: Climb through skylight with ladder.

Then, Lapis stepped away from the workbench, positioning himself behind the forge and ducking for cover. For a long, slow count of thirty, nothing happened - then, Nikki cooed from atop the bench, and Lapis walked back over to inspect the book.

To Lapis’ surprise, his original answer had been erased. In its place was a new line, written in the same narrow, looping, elegant hand as the original: It is a stone box, with solid walls, which contains naught but thee.

“Great, it’s Tom Riddle’s diary,” Lapis muttered, then he picked up the pencil again. I open the box, he wrote.

This time, the book responded within seconds, erasing his response and replacing it with a slightly less elegantly-written reply. It is not that kind of box. It is a cell, within which thou art entrapped.

“What, like a hamster ball?” Lapis asked, confused. I see if I can tip the box.

Thy efforts would be in vain. It is a stone cell, of considerable size and weight more considerable yet, and even were it not, it is fixed in place. The writing was now noticably messy.

“Uh-huh,” Lapis muttered, glancing at Nikki. “See, this is why I hate riddles. Everyone always goes ‘find the creative solution, think about ways that all the parts could fit together, it doesn’t matter how strange they are!’ But then, when you actually think outside the box-”

And then, it clicked. Lapis paused, groaned, and touched the pencil to the paper.

I stop imagining the cell, he wrote.

For a few seconds, there came no reply. Then, slowly, the book closed itself, the indigo-black material of the cover shimmering under the yellow lamplight of Lapis’ workshop. The book flashed with soft white light - and, moment by moment, tiny silver specks began to appear on the cover, twinkling almost like glitter.

Then, a thin, gleaming crescent shimmered into existence on the book’s cover, and Lapis realized - the lights weren’t glitter. They were stars, and as a few more of them twinkled into existence upon the book’s night sky, the cover slowly swung open again, this time to the first page.

At last, it read, the writing returned to something like their original elegance. Behold the Night’s Index - thy guide to all the lore of mind magic, dreamwalking, and a thousand other odds and ends of obscurity. Pray, unicorn, what dost thou seek to learn from us?

Lapis cocked an eyebrow. He looked at the word ‘us’ written on the page, then glanced back at the crescent moon on the cover of the book.

“Wow,” he muttered. “You are not subtle, are you?” Lapis picked up the pencil, and once again touched it to the page.

Let’s start, he wrote, with what you want from me.

The response was a few seconds slow in coming. Thy caution is without need. For those who prove themselves worthy, we demand no price for our guidance. We seek naught from thee, save to allay whatever fears brought this tome to thy side.

“Uh-huh,” Lapis muttered, thinking back to the fall he’d taken just after finding the book in the Castle of the Two Sisters, how a dark blue telekinetic field had slowed him down before he hit the ground. You know what? Even if she can’t get me home, I need to start getting enough sleep again. I’ve got to wrap this up.

“Wish me luck,” Lapis muttered, glancing to Nikki, then he touched his pencil to the page. Then you’ve gone to a lot of trouble for one pony’s nightmares, between following me into the Castle of the Two Sisters and stalking me in my dreams before then. Enough trouble to make me suspect you’re lying now, even if I hadn’t already caught you in the act. So, let me repeat myself:

What I want to know, Your Highness, is what you want from me.

From the top room of her tower in Canterlot, Princess Luna read the words that Lapis Print had just written and felt her eyes widen in surprise.

“…Hm,” she eventually said, her mane rippling in the air behind her. There was nopony else in her tower, and no light save that of a single candle upon her desk. She was still dressed in her sleeping gown - she ought to have been asleep, as Celestia’s sun was still crossing the sky, but the insistent buzzing of the book upon her desk had woken her from her slumber. Placing an Alarm Charm was, perhaps, an unwise measure, but Lapis Print represented Luna’s most interesting foray into easing her subjects’ Nightmares since her return, and she had long been eager for him to bite at her most recent bait.

Only now, she found that Lapis had foregone the bait entirely, and bit through the line instead…

A small smile spread across Princess Luna’s face. “How direct.”

She dipped her quill in ink before touching it back to the parchment. We must admit, this is a vast improvement over pretending us nonexistent, she wrote. We ask forgiveness for our dishonesty. We had assumed our presence was unwelcome, yet ‘twas still our solemn duty to aid thy Nightmares in abating.

Please stop avoiding the question, Your Highness, came the reply.

“Ha!” Luna laughed, a further grin spreading across her face. Very well. The price we seek, Lapis Print, is thy nightly discontent. Ordinary nightmares may become the spawning grounds for troubles far more corporeal, and thine are more persistent than they ought to be.

We have seen thee reduce thy fears to a crater in thy dreams, and yet they persist still. As such, we seek to help thee find and undo that which, in the waking world, is cause for such lasting unease. Thou hast already been chosen by a Nightmare once before - we would not again leave thee open to such a fate.

“Of course you wouldn’t,” Lapis muttered, resting his face on the wood of his workbench. The wood was cool, and soothing against the warm throbbing of his building headache.

This was bad. Princess Luna knew about his encounter with the Nightmare, and she knew about his continued anxiety. She had both official and personal motivation to hunt him down and pick through every detail of his situation. If Lapis had made this discovery a week ago, he’d be in full-blown panic mode - if he’d made it this morning, he’d be one loud noise away from having a Cascade.

Yet, now, all Lapis felt was tiredness. What had changed? Had he exhausted whatever parts of himself were meant to feel anger, terror, distrust? Or had Bon Bon and Lyra finally talked some sense into him, when in raw and continual panic he hadn’t made a lick of sense for two months? Was Lapis broken, or was he fixed?

Did it matter, as long as it let him start moving again?

Lapis snorted. I don’t know. That’s probably not a good sign, he thought.

He lowered his pencil to the page.

Trying to help me might be more trouble than it’s worth, Lapis’ reply eventually came, the letters writing themselves slowly and deliberately across the page. Luna stared down at them for a long time, her ears twitching slightly, her face blank as a mask over the thousand emotions washing over her, as great and changing and churning as the tides.

Slowly, she turned her gaze to the ceiling of her room. There, painted over polished black wood, was her moon.

And with that, thou hast given us no choice but to try.

Lapis read the words once, then shook his head, smirking. “Yeah, I should’ve known better than that,” he muttered. Then, he raised a hoof to his face, stifling a long, shuddering yawn.

Bon Bon was right. Lapis had been taking way too many risks since he’d come to Equestria, whether he realized it or not. This was one of them, but believing he could succeed alone was a bigger one.

I have three problems, he wrote. One of them is student loan debt. The second is a magical accident that tore me from the country where I owe, and transplanted me into Equestria instead. The third is sleep deprivation.

Tired now. More to follow when I wake up.

Author's Note

Patch Notes:
- Due to unexpected shorting of a neural implant, a previously unknown protocol identified as "Order 63" caused a key pony's gender identity to spontaneously reverse. This has since been fixed, and investigation into who wrote this protocol in the first place is now ongoing. (i can't find your name for the life of me, i'm sorry) (nvm, i see you LaTrans)

Hey, everypony! Not quite within "the next two weeks," but better than a month at least!

Alright, let me address the pink elephant in the room (and no, sadly, I'm not talking about alcohol): Pinkie Pie. TL;DR: Yes, I fucked up, and I cannot wait to show you why.

I've been reading the comments, and a consensus seems to be developing that Pinkie Pie, as I've written her, is psychotic. This is correct. I did this for a few different reasons, one of them being the case of poor Cranky Doodle Donkey, and another being Party of One - basically the entire episode.
Another consensus I've seen is that Pinkie Pie, as I've written her, is Flanderized. This is also correct. I did this because I fucked up. I'm sorry, and I'll do my best not to do it again.

Why did I fuck up? Well, that's more complicated, and also spoilers. So here's some hints instead.
See, Pinkie is insecure. Her wiki page has an entire section dedicated to this fact. I noticed this, and also noticed a common thread running through several of her "incidents:"
-- In Party of One, Pinkie Pie's breakdown is caused by fear that her friends are abandoning her.
-- In A Friend In Deed, Pinkie's reactions are caused by the eponymous donkey keeping firmly to himself. We'll come back to that.
-- In Too Many Pinkie Pies, Pinkie tries to clone herself in the first place due to an inability to spend time with all of her friends at once when they're in different places - and, she sticks it out past her copies because she'd "do just about anything to get to be with her friends again."
-- In Wonderbolts Academy, Pinkie gets worried that Rainbow Dash will forget about her and her friends. Worried enough, in fact, to check the mailbox for any mail from Rainbow every few seconds... within the first twenty-four hours, and then maintain this for three days, apparently without stopping.

Now, all of that on its own is interesting, but let's look at one more thing: Pinkie's fourth-ever line.

And if you're new, that meant you haven't met anyone yet, and if you haven't met anyone yet, you must not have any friends, and if you don't have any friends then you must be lonely, and that made me so sad, then I had an idea, and that's why I went [deep gasp]! I must throw a great big ginormous super-duper spectacular welcome party and invite everyone in Ponyville! See? And now you have lots and lots of friends!

Is Pinkie's immediate conclusion that Twilight must be lonely meant to juxtapose Twilight's "bah-humbug-I-need-no-friends" attitude? Probably!
Are Pinkie's immediate and insane reactions to any loneliness she perceives (regardless of whether or not it's actually there) related to this? Probably not!
"But," I thought. "Wouldn't it be neat if they were related?"

And so an idea was born.

What I'll say for now is this: Pinkie Pie, as I've tried to write her, is a genuinely well-meaning pony who has a number of screws loose, and who also has a number of buttons that shouldn't be pushed. And Lapis, as I've tried to write him, played Whac-A-Mole with those buttons despite never knowing they existed. I regret my failure, I mean to improve upon it, and that's all I can say on the subject.

Next up: I'm flattered that the two of you are both so invested in this story - that said, please stop arguing, you'll free Discord. No, Lapis is not casting from HP, nor is he casting from his lifespan. He mentioned his gray streak in the previous chapter because he thought Nikki had shit in his mane, hence why he got slapped. He's not dying, he's just accumulating levels of exhaustion. It's my bad for not making that clear, and if you were arguing over it, then there have to be other people who are also confused, so I figured I'd clear it up here. I may write about Big Sads a lot (not to be confused with The Big Sad of the 1930s), but I promise, I will never get quite that dark.

(...I said, after referencing the single most existentially depressing storyline I've ever experienced with the chapter number.)

Finally, other things I will never do, just in case any of you think I've forgotten: build a harem and/or herd, alicorn-ify the MC, write Mary-Sueage, write edginess. I bring this up for a few reasons; namely Applejack, Hot Cocoa, and Princess Luna. There's a lot of mares in this story, I'm aware of this fact, that's on me. Rest assured that, even if Lapis ever considers romance viable, he would only try it with one pony at a time - and is strongly inclined to stay in his own age range.

Alright, I think that's all for now. Thanks again for reading, and I'll see you in the next one. 'Till then!

7th Prime: Lesson One

It was a sunny Tuesday morning in Ponyville, only slightly chilly with the approach of autumn - though Lapis Print didn’t know it was cold, yet. He’d have opened a window if he’d known, since the heat of his forge was practically choking in his basement.

Nevertheless, he persisted, gently tapping away at what was beginning to resemble a large pair of iron goggles without any lenses, the metal gleaming red with its own heat, the anvil reflecting the orange coals of the furnace. Lapis had already gotten the basic shape of the goggles down, at this point it was just a matter of working out the kinks.

I really wasn’t expecting Princess Luna to be this helpful, Lapis thought, as he tapped out the last unwanted bend and started looking for a scribing tool. But, well, even with the information I held back…

Lapis hadn’t written to Luna about everything, the morning after he’d first introduced himself. He didn’t mention that “A-mare-ica” was in another world, he wasn’t sure how to bring up the Elements of Harmony yet, and he wasn’t even going to think about the ‘prophecy’ while he was looking at Luna’s book. Otherwise, however, Lapis brought Luna about as up-to-speed as he had for Bon Bon back in Ponyville General, though he also mentioned some broad strokes about his home - advanced metalworking techniques, widespread use of electricity, large number of diverse cultures, and so on.

When he’d mentioned multiple spoken languages, though, Luna had initially been confused. At first, she’d been asking Lapis whether he really thought there were half a dozen different languages spoken in Amareica, and eventually she asked if “the reach of Harmony extends not to thy lands,” which had only confused Lapis more. After some mutually-bewildered back-and-forth, Luna had finally explained something that only left Lapis with more questions.

Apparently, magic did stuff on its own sometimes, providing a package of benefits so wide-reaching that most ponies didn’t even know there was an alternative. And, apparently, one of the things that magic did was to translate between the languages of different species. ‘Harmony’ wasn’t quite omnipresent: it made exceptions for Prench, and it seemed to prioritize the most difficult situations. So, ponies who only rarely encountered languages they didn’t speak would be mystified as normal, but griffons would always seem to speak perfect ‘Equuish’ despite lacking lips.

And griffons wandering into Equestria, Lapis recalled, are able to understand ponies and read Equuish text, despite being raised to speak, read, and write their own language. They perceive all Equuish as Gryphic. And as long as they’re in Equestria, even if they think they’re writing in Gryphic, they’re observably writing in Equuish characters instead. So what I want to know is…

Lapis tapped the last rune into the goggles on his anvil, quenched the goggles in a nearby bucket of water, then slid on several sections of copper casing, making sure that all the topaz gems - along with the single ruby - were set firmly into their sockets. Is this happening to me, too? Am I seeing English everywhere, when really everything’s written in a whole other language?

Then, slowly, Lapis slid the goggles onto his face.

The goggles were one of the simpler designs he’d come up with. The iron frames were designed to pull only on magic that was headed for Lapis’ eyes, and the copper casing would absorb that magic and redirect it into the four topaz gems surrounding each eyepiece, angled so that they wouldn’t shine straight into Lapis’ eyes. The frames were the difficult part - inscribing the strongest attraction runes Lapis knew, then making sure they affected only the magic headed for Lapis’ eyes, had barely left any room to add on a failsafe. This time, though, Lapis had learned from his mistakes and added a safety mechanism: if the ruby on the goggles’ bridge stopped detecting his body heat, then the frames would stop pulling in magic, and the goggles would shut off.

Lapis made sure the goggles were positioned correctly, wincing as the ruby settled onto his muzzle. Wow, that’s cold. Then, to his relief, the topaz gems flickered and began to emit a soft, warm, buttery-yellow light. Alright, it’s picking up something- could be the translation spell, but it might also just be free-flowing mana. Only one way to find out.

Lapis swallowed, walked over to the workbench, and looked down at his books… then, a triumphant grin split his face. Bingo!

The text of both Trixie’s grimoire and the guide to pegasus aerodynamics had been completely replaced, their pages instead full of small, simple pictograms - butterflies, spirals, flowers, and so on. Details were difficult to make out, though: for some reason, all the text was wrapped in a waving haze of prismatic light, as if Lapis were viewing them through a rainbow-tinged heat shimmer. Lapis opened his own notebook, checking the pages he’d written, and frowned - here, too, the English he’d written had been replaced with Equuish. Huh. Well, that’s not good. How am I supposed to look for books written in English now?

Lapis grimaced, then flipped to a blank page, picked up his pencil, and scribbled down: The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. Then, he lifted the goggles off his face, and saw no change in the letters he’d just written. Everything else, however, was once again written in English. Lapis double-checked his work, looking at the letters with the goggles, then without, then with them again - and, to his relief, the sentence he’d written with the goggles on remained in English.

“Alright,” Lapis breathed, grinning. So it looks like it’s still possible to write in your own language here, if you’ve got the means to catch the spell in action. If I’m lucky, then I’m not the only one who’s figured that out - so, the next time I go looking around a library or someplace, I do it with the goggles on. That way, if anything in there is written in English, then I’ll be able to tell right away…

Lapis’ eyes fell on the book of shipping records from the Castle of the Two Sisters, saw that its title was still legible upon its spine, and felt his eyes widen. …Like that, for example.

Slowly, Lapis picked up the book and began to flip through the pages. Much of the text was still in Equuish, but here or there, he’d find a line written in angular, spidery English: 2 tons Amberhoof copper, or Smithing hammers, six sets. A possibility dawned on Lapis, and he flipped to the last page of the record, his hooves shaking as he read:
- 256 steel ingots, excellent condition (Pinion forged)
- 2 items griffon stonecarving, perfect condition
- Message for Gara Pinion (delivered directly)

“YES!” Lapis shouted, pumping his hoof. “Ha! I knew it!” Gara Pinion. Either she, or somepony close to her, was never a pony at all. They were human, or at least they were near enough to one to have a reason for writing in English.

Lapis exhaled, then let his head droop, chuckling to himself. A lead. Finally, I have a fucking lead. I need to find out more about Gara Pinion.

I need to go back to the Castle. …Or write to Luna. Probably both.

A short while later, Lapis emerged from his basement, grabbed the request slips off his corkboard, and started to plan his way through one more workday in Ponyville. Today looked like it would be relatively light - he had nothing to do but a couple of roofing jobs, and as Lapis looked at their slips, he frowned. The roofs in question were on opposite sides of Ponyville, and yet the requests to repair them had been filled out by the same pony: the messy scrawl across each note was identical, right down to the the jagged, trailing lines that the writer had used to dot their i’s and cross their t’s.

…Then again, Lapis thought, they didn’t really write any i’s or t’s at all, did they?

After retrieving his goggles, Lapis put them on to look at the request slips, and felt his eyes widen as an astonished grimace spread across his face. Whoever had requested the roofing jobs, their hoofwriting had actually been improved by the translation spell - in Equuish, the request slips didn’t look like they’d been written on, so much as tossed into a paint shaker full of pencils. Here or there, Lapis could make out an individual character, but for the most part there barely seemed to be any pattern at all. Okay then, I guess I’d better let magic take one for the team this time around.

Lapis removed the goggles, tucking them into his saddlebags, then grabbed his ladder and headed out for the nearer of the two roofing jobs, keeping his head on a swivel as he went. While Lapis was, technically speaking, done running and hiding from the Elements of Harmony, he sure wasn’t done worrying about them. No, his job at this point was to be as normal, easily-accessible, and boring as possible. In short, Lapis needed to be forgettable, so that the Elements who were inclined to forget him would have an easier time doing so.

And, so far, this seemed to have worked - since the Hot Air Balloon Incident, none of the Elements had darkened Lapis’ doorstep-

Ope. Twilight at two o’clock. She was trotting down the street in the opposite direction of Lapis with an apparently confident grin on her face, and would’ve seemed perfectly casual if not for the fact that she was talking to herself. “…got this, Twilight. You still have plenty of time to get that letter to Princess Celestia. There has to be somepony around here who needs the help of a good friend!”

Uh-oh. Lapis started composing a list of reasons why he didn’t need any help, but was saved the trouble when a shrill scream echoed from the direction of the Carousel Boutique. Twilight perked up at once, and hurried away just as another, louder scream split the air, Lapis’ ears tucking themselves back atop his head. Should I be worried about that? …Eh, Twilight’s got it covered. I’ll probably just have to clean up some of the mess, later on.

Lapis nodded, then continued on his way, arriving at the roof he’d been paid to fix a few minutes later, propping up the ladder against the wall and climbing up. And, on today’s menu, we have…

He reached the top of the ladder, and spotted the problem almost immediately - a pegasus-shaped crater, with a few sky-blue feathers dotted through the strands of thatch. …Surprise surprise, it’s a Rainbow crater! Again.

Well, here we go. Lapis grimaced, then grabbed a spool of twine from his saddlebags and began the process of tying the bundles of thatch back together…

An hour later, Lapis climbed back down from the ladder, the spool of twine lighter than it had been by half. Well, that sucked, but no more than usual. At least it’s not boiling hot outside any more!

“Hey, Lapis! There you are!”

Lapis looked over just in time to spot Lyra trotting over. “Hey, Lyra. What’s up?”

“Well, me and Bon Bon are making those cinnamon drops today,” Lyra said. “And it seemed like you had fun when we were trying to make gumdrops, so I thought I’d see if you wanted to drop by and pitch in!”

“Cinnamon drops,” Lapis muttered. “So, are they like… lemon drops, but with cinnamon?”

“That’s the idea!” Lyra said. “They’re a little bit harder, too. More of a melt-in-your-mouth kind of thing, so the cinnamon’s got more time to warm you up. They’re super easy, though! You in?”

Lapis thought about it for a second, then nodded. “Yeah, I’ve got a pretty light workload today. Plus, there’s some stuff I need to catch the two of you up on. Let’s do it.”

“Great!” Lyra said, beaming. “C’mon, Bon Bon’ll get antsy if we take too long.”

“…It’s fine,” Twilight was muttering to herself at that moment, near the outskirts of Ponyville. She was lying on her side atop a park bench, firmly curled into a ball and stroking her own tail with a hoof. “It’ll all be fine! The day isn’t over yet-”

She lurched upright atop the park bench and stared, terrified, at the early-afternoon sun. “But it will be over, soon!”

Twilight waited a few moments - and, when the sun refused to retrace its steps across the sky, she fell back upon the park bench and groaned, staring down into a puddle.

This wasn’t the first time that Twilight had approached a meltdown over deadlines. She wasn’t sure whether she hoped it would be the last or not - after all, there were two ways that this could be her last close deadline. Either she'd make her friendship report before the evening and never, ever forget another one ever again, or else-

No! No. Bad Twilight. Don’t even think about it.

“It’ll all be over,” she muttered anyway. “My time in Ponyville, my advanced studies!”

Twilight pulled back, taking a deep breath and facing her own reflection in the puddle. “No, no, you’re a good student. You can do this!” She forced a grin, her ears flopping back atop her head even as she pumped an enthusiastic hoof.

“Oh… but what if I can’t?!” Twilight’s reflection asked. Her mane looked terrible - she’d need to take a brush to it, after all this was over.

“You CAN!” Twilight reassured herself. “You just have to keep it together. Keep. It. Together!”

“Are you talking to… yourself?” a familiar voice asked.

Shoot. I am. Twilight groaned internally, but continued to glare at her own reflection in the puddle. Come on. You KNOW how you get about deadlines! It’s not that bad, just get ahold of yourself and-

“Twilight?” the voice asked, and Twilight suddenly heard giggling off in the distance. It sounded familiar, too… too familiar…

Twilight looked up, past the set of purple-scaled talons that was being waved before her face, and saw the source of the laughter. They were three little fillies, and one second they were playing jump-rope - then, the next they were pointing their hooves at Twilight again. Pointing and laughing, their smiles sharp and mocking, and Twilight could feel the heat of their contempt like fire in her coat-

“SNAP OUT OF IT!”

Twilight blinked, and suddenly she was back in Ponyville, lying on her back atop a dry, dusty dirt path. Spike was standing over Twilight, staring down at her with mingled exasperation and worry written across his face, and a large, flat box held in one forepaw. “Are you okay?” he asked.

…Did that really just…? Twilight got to her hooves, looking over the top of the hill with Spike. The three little fillies that she’d heard were just jumping rope, and though they were giggling, it was only about their game. Oh. Oh, shoot. It’s this again.

“Twilight, I’m really worried,” Spike was saying, as Twilight rubbed her eyes, then sat back on her hooves, wobbling slightly. Come on, Twilight. Keep it together. There’s got to be something I can write to the Princess about! “I mean, this letter thing is really getting to you! Here - you’ve been so anxious all day that you completely forgot about the picnic! Why don’t you just relax and go hang out with-”

“THE PICNIC!” Twilight shouted, wheeling on Spike and snatching the box. That’s perfect! Why didn’t I think of that before?! “I should go see my friends!”

Twilight turned and started galloping toward the spot that Pinkie had picked for the picnic. And they’ll all be in one place, so I’ll be able to ask all of them at once, so they’ll have to have some way to help!

They’ve gotta have something. They have to.

“Glad you’ve come to your senses!” Spike announced, as Twilight made haste toward the picnic site with the box levitating by her side, not even looking over her shoulder.

And, really, that was all Spike wanted to make of the situation. Sure, Twilight and deadlines got along about as well as oil and water, especially when she was stressed already, but it seemed like she had things sorted out now. Honestly, I’ll bet that Twilight should be ready to write that letter only a few minutes after I get back to the library. I could head over there now, grab a snack, and Twilight will sort herself out just fine!

Juuust fine.

…Unfortunately, Spike knew better than that.

Spike groaned, then sat atop the same park bench that Twilight had been perched on only a few moments before. And here we go again. Any problems I’ve got, that Twilight can solve before sundown. Any problems. Aaaaany… problems. C’mon, I’ve got to have some problem for Twilight.

“Huh,” Spike muttered. “Problems for Twilight… what about Twilight’s problems? What’s she been worried about lately?”

Spike raised a hand, counting off his claws. “Well, she’s wanted to do the checklist rewrite for a long time. But she finished that yesterday and tested the new checklist today, so that won’t work. There’s all the books on cleaning that have gone missing… but that’s not really a pony-to-pony problem, either.”

Spike paused. “…Huh.” Missing books. That reminds me, didn’t Twilight…

Hey, wait a minute! That’s right! Twilight wrote that extra letter about Lapis Wren, or whatever his name is. Spike groaned, smacking himself in the forehead. Duh. Guess I’d better get back to the library and find that letter - the sooner it gets into Twilight’s hooves, the better.

“…MIX EVENLY ALREADY, you pile of hayseeds!” Bon Bon was yelling into a bubbling cauldron of orange-ish liquid, as Lapis and Lyra walked into her kitchen. “When I want swirls, believe me, I will swirl them in myself- Lyra, Lapis, good timing. Could I bother one of you to stir this bowl for a while?”

“On it!” Lyra chirped, and a second later, the handle of the paddle that Bon Bon had been holding was engulfed in orange light. “Did you get the first batch ready?”

“No,” Bon Bon muttered. “The cinnamon is all even, but the orange food coloring just won’t mix all the way. Lapis, could you open up that cabinet and fish out the little orange bottle?”

“Sure thing,” Lapis said, pulling open the cabinet in question - to reveal an enormous arrangement of bottles, tins, and other assorted receptacles. “…What side of the cabinet would that be on?”

“Front right,” Bon Bon said, ducking into a cabinet by the oven and pulling out a baking sheet, which she sat on the counter. “So. Lapis. While I’ve got you in here, there’s a couple of things I’ve been meaning to ask you.”

“Same here, but hang on a second,” Lapis said, pulling the first orange bottle he spotted out of the cabinet. “Is it this one you wanted?”

Bon Bon glanced over. “Uh-huh.” She reached forward, taking the bottle between her teeth - then, with a flick of her head, she sent the bottle shooting across the kitchen, where it landed in a trash can with a sharp metallic clang. “Now, there should’ve been a red bottle right next to that one. Grab that, get it out, and then standby for further instructions.”

“…Coming right up,” Lapis said, returning his focus to the cabinet.

“So what was it you wanted to ask?” Bon Bon said, as she pulled a roll of wax paper from a cabinet.

“Oh, yeah, there’s actually a couple of things. First off, I made another gizmo,” Lapis explained.

By the cauldron, Lyra paused, and over the bubbling of the orange stuff Lapis thought he heard an “uh-oh.” Bon Bon, meanwhile, finished spreading a sheet of wax paper over her baking sheet, then glanced over at Lapis. “Okay. And is this one going to go on a rampage through Ponyville?”

Lapis frowned, pulling the pair of goggles from his saddlebag and holding them where Bon Bon could see them. “If they do, then I’ll honestly be impressed.”

“Oh, you’ve brought it into my store,” Bon Bon said, giving the goggles a quick once-over. “Great. Let’s save it until after we’re done worrying about the five pounds of molten sugar that Lyra’s dealing with?”

“Makes sense to me,” Lapis said, returning the goggles to his bag. “So the other thing was, I was wondering whether you’d found any pegasi willing to go into the Everfree with me.”

“No, I have not,” Bon Bon said, slowly and carefully. It was the same tone of voice that Lapis might once have used, if a grown adult had asked him whether he’d spotted any elves recently.

“Same here,” Lyra said, straining as she withdrew the paddle from the pot of sugar. “Lapis, do you have the food coloring yet? This stuff’s about ready to harden.”

“Coming right up,” Lapis said, he and Bon Bon approaching the pot at the same time. Lyra took the bottle of food coloring from Lapis’ grip, levitating a box of toothpicks from a drawer, while Bon Bon stuffed her face into a nearby cabinet - and emerged with the bottom half of her face encased by tough-looking pink fabric.

“What the…” Lapis muttered, as Bon Bon opened her mouth, revealing that the piece of fabric on her face had a cuff which covered her lower jaw, and a pocket that extended an inch or two into her mouth.

Lyra giggled. “What, have you never seen an oven mask before?”

Oven mask…? Oh, like an oven mitt. “Not so much, no,” Lapis said, as Bon Bon picked up the pot with her mouth and carried it to a potholder by the baking sheet, her teeth and lips protected from the scorching metal by the mask on her face. “Huh. Bon Bon, I could’ve floated that over for you.”

“Drmf brfr,” Bon Bon said. She paused, rolled her eyes, then delicately spat out the mask and tried again, smirking. “I mean, don’t bother. This thing’s heavier than it looks, I’d hate for you to strain your horn or something. But anyway, this brings us to the tedious part, which is why Lyra asked you over.”

“Can’t be worse than roofwork,” Lapis said. “Let’s get going, I’m ready whenever.”

Lyra set down the bottle of red food coloring and the box of toothpicks, then levitated a toothpick over to Lapis. “Great! So, you know how a lot of candies have swirls in them?”

“Yep,” Lapis said, as Bon Bon grabbed a tiny spoon and began to scoop small dollops of the melted translucent-orange sugar onto the baking sheet, one at a time.

“Okay, good,” Lyra said, “because that’s what we’re doing!” She dipped the toothpick in the bottle of red food coloring, and brought it back out tinted with a warm, deep maroon. Then, Lyra stuck the toothpick in one of the dollops of sugar and gave it a quick, gentle swirl, the toothpick’s tip leaving a spiraling ribbon of red inside the thick liquid sugar.

Lapis cocked an eyebrow. “That’s it?”

“Sure is!” Lyra said, grinning. “That’s all we’ve got to do. I’d grab a toothpick and get started, though, because we still need to do it about two hundred fifty more times.”

“Oh, there’s the catch,” Lapis said, levitating his own toothpick from the box.

Bon Bon chuckled around the spoon in her mouth. “Yeah, Lyra hates this part.”

“No I don’t!” Lyra protested. “…I just think there’s got to be a better way to do it, that’s all.”

“Probably,” Lapis said, as the How It’s Made theme song lodged itself in his head. Nah, I couldn’t do that. Don’t want to accidentally start the Industrial Revolution or something, and besides, assembly-line machinery isn’t even my field of specialization.

…Then again, neither is artifice. Which brings me back to my most recent problem. Lapis continued to swirl the dye into the drops, and began trying to figure out how he was supposed to access the other bookshelf inside the Castle of the Two Sisters. Let’s see… if I can’t find any pegasi who are willing to help, then that means I’ll need to figure out something else. The grappling gauntlet won’t cut it, I’ll need to be up there for way longer than it’ll keep me still for. Something like a ladder would be ideal, but… well, that’s a way longer ladder than I could just carry through the Everfree.

“So,” Bon Bon said. “You’re still planning on going back into the Everfree?”

“Yep,” Lapis said, dipping his toothpick back into the bottle of food coloring. “That bookshelf isn’t going to check itself.”

“The one you said was in the Castle of the Two Sisters?” Lyra asked, her ears tipping back with what looked like nervousness. “Isn’t that place cursed?”

“Not that I saw,” Lapis said, frowning. “Old, overgrown, and deserted, but not cursed. Honestly, the parts I explored were kinda peaceful.”

“Sounds like an accident waiting to happen,” Bon Bon grumbled, tapping the last dollop of cinnamon gel off her spoon and pulling a toothpick of her own from the box. “Remind me again why you’re going in there in the first place?”

“Gara Pinion,” Lapis said. “Remember how I thought they were a liaison to A-mare-ica?”

Lyra nodded. “Because their name kept showing up next to all the weird metals?”

“Exactly,” Lapis said. “Well, I confirmed this morning that they write in Eng- that they write the same way I do. That basically guarantees that they’re familiar with either A-mare-ica or a related nation.”

“…Write the same way you do?” Bon Bon asked, frowning. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Has to do with the goggles I made,” Lapis said, gesturing to his saddlebags. “I can show you in a little bit, but we should probably finish swirling these first.”

“Yeah, that’s true,” Bon Bon said. “It probably won’t take longer than forty-five minutes, though. In the meantime… how sure are you about all this prophecy stuff, really?”

“Oh,” Lapis said, pausing midway through one of the cinnamon drops. “Well, hopefully, a hundred percent sure.”

Bon Bon cocked an eyebrow. “‘Hopefully?’”

“Yeah. I mean, assuming I haven’t messed it all up by now,” Lapis said. “What I’m trying to plan for is around eighty percent accuracy or so. Maybe eighty-five.”

Lyra grinned. “Y’know, for somepony who isn’t sure, those are some pretty specific numbers.”

“…I guess,” Lapis said, shrugging.

“Especially considering that you only remember the ‘big stuff,’” Bon Bon added. “Lapis, I believe the whole prophecy thing, I’m just not sure I believe non-interference is the best policy. Do you have any idea how much of a problem Discord was, back when he was free?”

“Pretty big,” Lapis muttered. “I mean, if he can turn an entire town’s roadway system into soap-”

Lapis froze. “Uh. I… said nothing.”

“And the cleats I’ll be keeping by the door from now on are just coincidence,” Bon Bon said, evenly. “That’s the thing - what if, it’s that simple. You said that nopony really gets hurt, right? What if it just happens that when the demon who nearly destroyed Equestrian civilization finally escapes, somehow nopony really gets hurt. And it had absolutely nothing to do with any royally-organized evacuation drills, no. That letter that the Princess burned to ashes as she gave the orders definitely didn’t have your signature on it.”

Bon Bon turned to face Lapis, the toothpick sticking out from the corner of her mouth bobbing as she spoke. “What if that’s what happened, and you never knew it, because that’s not what you needed to know? What if this prophecy didn’t explain how to fix things on purpose, so that the wrong ponies couldn’t make sure things stayed broken? What if you’re the fix?”

Lapis felt the toothpick slow to a stop as he dropped it inside the bottle of red food coloring. “…That’s a hell of a thing to just drop on someone, Bon Bon.”

Bon Bon shrugged. “You were here. I figured I might as well.”

“Uh-huh,” Lapis said, picking up his toothpick and trying to resume work. “I’m pretty sure that’s not what’s going on, though. If that’s what was supposed to happen, then… the magic accident would’ve happened to someone who knew the story better, so they’d have a better idea of what would need to be fixed.”

“…Maybe,” Lyra said, waving a hoof back and forth. “I mean, yeah, maybe.”

Lapis raised an eyebrow at Lyra, and she froze, glancing back and forth.

“…I mean, y’know,” Lyra eventually said. “You are, kinda, pretty good at fixing stuff.”

Lapis opened his mouth, then closed it. “Well, then they wouldn’t have picked someone who’s got a deadline. My family’s debt, my debt, isn’t going to pay itself. That’s a problem I know I can fix, so that takes priority. I save them first.”

“You were able to fix Nightmare Moon’s problem,” Bon Bon countered, as she began to swirl her way down a line of cinnamon drops. “That was a big one. And, we were able to keep the Nightmare from taking over anypony else. Maybe you can do both.”

“Bon Bon, I can’t use ‘maybes’ and ‘what-ifs,’ okay?” Lapis said, raising a hoof. “Believe me, I come up with enough of those on my own. I’ve got to focus on definite things. What I know, what I can find out. If I don’t do that, I can’t focus on anything.”

“Well, why not?” Bon Bon asked, frowning.

Because, Lapis thought, there’s already a very big what-if I can’t handle thinking about, and one more maybe might just leave me no option.

He took a deep breath. “…I just can’t, okay? Can we please just focus on swirling these things?”

“Sure can!” Lyra chirped, and Lapis pretended not to notice that she was staring directly at Bon Bon as he got back to work.

“…Alright,” Bon Bon eventually said, and she, too, lowered her toothpick back to the food coloring.

“Not in here,” Spike muttered.

He pulled the bowl of sapphires out of the fridge, popped one into his mouth as he shut the door with his foot, then resumed searching for Twilight’s pre-written letter about the repair-pony. “Already checked her writing desk, and it wasn’t there. That means she wasn’t really in the writing mood when she wrote it, so it won’t be in any of her usual composing nooks…”

Spike swallowed his mouthful of precious gemstone, then tossed another sapphire in, his face scrunching in concentration as he chewed. Snacks were supposed to help you think, right? Honestly, it was hard for him to think about anything when there were sapphires around. …Or when Rarity was around.

“Rarity…” Spike muttered. “Oh, yeah, Rarity was here, right! And Twilight was over here, and…”

Spike glanced around the room, then carefully walked over to where he remembered Twilight standing, striking a dignified pose with the bowl of sapphires cradled in his arm. “‘Dear Princess Celestia. Today I learned a very important lesson about friendship. Here’s some gossip, here’s a one-sentence recap written like a moral, and here’s the moral phrased differently, in case I didn’t make the connection between the gossip and the moral clear the first time. Your faithful student, Twilight Sparkle.’”

Spike held out an arm. “ ‘Wait, Spike! Don’t send it yet. What do you mean, Rarity? I can’t have a crush on him, he looks just like my B.B.B.B.F….’”

Spike trailed off. “Wait, wasn’t it just three B’s?” He thought about it for a second, then shook his head. “Eh. So then she did the Spiders Dance, and then I started telling Rarity about the Spy-ders, and Twilight went… back behind the counter, right!”

He grinned, patting the top of the bowl of sapphires. “Huh. Snacks!”

About thirty seconds and three gems later, Spike emerged from a drawer behind the counter with a letter firmly clutched in his hand. He flicked it open with a claw, his ear fins springing forward as he scanned down the page. “‘Dear Princess Celestia, I recently encountered one Lapis Print…’ Perfect!”

Spike grinned, hopping up onto his stool and picking another sapphire out of the bowl. Now he just had to wait until Twilight got back, and-

There was a flash of magenta light and a crackle like electricity, and Spike yelped in surprise, the gem slipping from his claws as he toppled to the floor.

“SPIKE!” a desperate, familiar voice called, and Spike groaned as he sat up. That specific ratio of exasperation to fear in her tone (one to two) was warning sign number two. Warning number one had been that Twilight had teleported into the library, instead of walking. Clearly, the picnic hadn’t gone well.

Twilight was pacing, her utterly-frazzled mane bouncing stiffly with every step, her hooves clacking against the floor of the library as Spike rounded the library counter. “I need a problem, fast,” she was saying, looking right past Spike as she turned to pace the other direction. “My friends didn’t have anything. Nothing! They told me I shouldn’t sweat the small stuff! Like this was small!”

“Um, wow,” Spike said. “Well, turns out, I’ve got something!”

Twilight froze in place, and then in another flash of magenta light, she was standing directly in front of Spike, her muzzle inches from his face. “You do?!”

Spike, who had learned to expect this sort of thing, grinned and offered Twilight the letter. “Yep! You saved this one back weeks ago, just in case you needed it!”

Slowly, Twilight levitated the letter from Spike’s grasp, pressing it open atop the counter with shaky hooves - then, slowly, a manic grin split her face as she read it. “This won’t work, but I know what will. Spike!”

“Ready!” Spike announced, unfurling a scroll of parchment and looking around for a quill.

“‘Dear Princess Celestia,’” Twilight began, and Spike threw caution to the wind, popping the cork off the inkwell and writing with the tip of his claw.

“‘For a little over two months, I’ve been confused by the behavior of one Lapis Print, a pony who had his heart set on never encountering me or my friends. At first, I had thought that this made him pretty strange - then, after I talked to a mutual acquaintance of ours, I realized that me and my friends were the strange ponies. We had saved the world - of course he might be nervous about getting near us. Or so I was told.’

“‘However,’” Twilight continued, “‘I suspected that there might be more to the situation. And while I certainly didn’t endorse Pinkie Pie’s hunting him down and throwing him a whole Welcome-to-Ponyville festival, she certainly gave me the chance to find out. And it turned out that really, he just didn’t want a Welcome-to-Ponyville Party, and was staying away from me and my friends so that Pinkie wouldn’t be able to throw one for him.’”

“Huh,” Spike said, his brow beginning to furrow. “Sorry, when was this?”

“Earlier this week,” Twilight said.

“And this pony said he didn’t want a party,” Spike said, cocking his head, “but Pinkie threw him a whole festival.”

“That’s right,” Twilight replied, then she raised a hoof and opened her mouth to continue dictating.

“So, how come you didn’t think of this sooner?” Spike asked.

Twilight paused. “What do you mean?”

“Well, you need to write to Princess Celestia about a friendship problem,” Spike said. “And, well, if I were this pony, I’m pretty sure I’d see the whole tracking-me-down thing as a problem-”

It was at this point that Spike realized what he was saying, and clapped his hand over his mouth. Unfortunately, it was the hand that he’d been using to write, and Spike felt a drop of ink running down his cheek as he watched a look of wide-eyed, horrified realization spread across Twilight’s face. Uh-oh. Gotta backtrack this, quick.

“But if he said it was fine-” Spike began.

“He did,” Twilight said, nodding.

Spike sighed in relief.

“But what if he didn’t mean it?” Twilight said.

Spike winced. Here we go.

“Oh, no,” Twilight muttered, her ears slowly flopping back atop her head as she levitated Spike’s scroll from his claws. “Oh, no no no. This isn’t a friendship letter, it’s a confession! Oh…”

Twilight briefly glanced around the room, then shut her eyes and focused - and a second later, the scroll burst into orange, non-magical fire, which reduced it to ashes in less than a second. “I’ve been looking for a friendship problem this whole time, but I think I made one! -But if I talk to him, if I get him to admit he was upset and accept my apology… It'll be fine! It'll all be fine. I just have to hurry.”

Twilight ignited her horn again, and a fresh scroll floated across the room to her side, along with an inkwell and quill. And, before Spike could say anything in response, she’d galloped through the library door and out of sight.

Spike waited for a count of five, then pulled another scroll of parchment from the desk, along with an inkwell. He hesitated as he dipped his claw in the ink, then glanced over at the pile of ashes on the floor and swallowed.

He always hoped he was just being paranoid, whenever he wrote one of these letters. But intentional pyrokinesis was always the final warning, especially when it was done anywhere near books. Twilight didn’t put books in danger unless she was hitting critical mass, and that was going to be bad news for anypony - or any dragon - who didn’t make themselves scarce until some serious, serious help arrived. And there was only one pony in Equestria with that grade of problem-solving power.

Dear Princess Celestia, Spike wrote, a nervous grimace fixing itself on his face as he glanced at the library door again.

Code Morning Glory.

He rolled up the scroll, not bothering to seal it before sucking in a breath and blasting the scroll with enchanted flame. It shot out the window at blistering speed, Spike already hurrying up the stairs toward his improvised emergency bunker.

He belched out another scroll midway through scrambling underneath Twilight’s bed, unfurling it to reveal three lines of neat, sharp print. He recognized the writing immediately, it was what the Princess used when she was in too much of a hurry for cursive.

Spike,

I am on my way.

Elaborate.

“Alright,” Lapis said, picking up the goggles and offering them to Lyra. “So you know how there’s normal Equish, and then there’s Prench?”

“Um, yeah,” Lyra said, taking the goggles from Lapis’ telekinetic grip and looking them over. They’d just finished swirling the cinnamon drops, and Lyra had taken the initiative to ask Lapis about his latest creation. As such, Lapis thought it only fair that she get to try them first.

“Well, it turns out there’s more than just Prench,” Lapis said. “Griffons have Gryphic, zebras have Zebrican, and Amareicans - well, more than just us, but still - have English. We just don’t notice that Griffons are speaking a different language-”

“Because Harmony translates for them,” Bon Bon said, waving her hoof. “…Except in such cases where they don’t intend for their words to be understood by a foreign party, in which cases Harmony respects their wish.”

Lyra gave Bon Bon a funny look, and Bon Bon shrugged. “Canterlot’s a big place. Lots of foreign ponies. Eventually, you figure it out.”

“Okay,” Lyra said. “So, wait. Lapis, you’re trying to say that it’s not just your swear words? Like… I don’t know, instead of saying-”

And then, Lyra contorted her mouth and produced a stuttering and distinctly horselike noise somewhere between a squeaky printer and a sedan hitting its brakes too quickly.

“-or something,” Lyra continued, as if nothing unusual had happened, “you’re just saying gibberish? Or, um, not gibberish, but some other word that would sound like nonsense to me?”

“Uh,” Lapis said, frowning. “I think so. …Sorry, what just happened?”

“Lyra said ‘muffins,’ but she specifically meant for it to be in Equish,” Bon Bon said, looking between Lapis and Lyra. “So, Harmony left it in Equish for Lapis instead of translating, the same way that it just sounds like a really loud screech when a… relatively reserved griffon calls somepony a spineless egg hen. Meanwhile, Harmony keeps translating as I say ‘muffins’, because I’m imagining actual muffins as I say it, instead of just referring to the word-”

Bon Bon’s face contorted, and a split second later, she produced a noise identical to the one that Lyra had just made. Lapis and Lyra both looked it her in confusion, and Bon Bon rolled her eyes. “It’s weird. Try not to think about it too hard, it works better that way.”

Lyra’s ears flopped back, and her brow furrowed as she made a vaguely-nervous nickering noise. Lapis’ expression must have betrayed his bewilderment, because Bon Bon sighed in exasperation, then turned to Lapis. “She says that might be tricky.”

“Wait,” Lapis said. “So, Lyra will understand if I’m talking about butter…”

Lyra nodded.

“…But as soon as I focus on saying the word,” Lapis said, “then instead of understanding, she’ll just hear ‘butter?’”

Lyra’s eyes widened, then she suddenly giggled, covering her mouth with a hoof. “Sorry, I shouldn’t laugh, it’s just… That one sounds fun to say.” Lyra concentrated for a second, and when next she spoke, her voice was back to sounding horselike, trailing into something between a rolling ‘R’ and a snort as she spoke. “Buh-drr.”

Bon Bon rolled her eyes, smirking. “Yeah, that’s kind of a strange one. But Lapis, let’s get back on topic. What do the goggles do?”

“Right,” Lapis said, shaking his head. “Well, uh, the same way that we’re making different noises to describe the same thing, we also write different words to describe the same thing. It’s just that - thanks to Harmony, I guess - I didn’t notice until recently. These goggles are designed to help me see that kind of stuff, by grabbing any magic that’s headed for my eyes and using it to make light from these topaz gems.”

“Oh! Oh, okay, now I’ve gotta see this,” Lyra said, and then she slid the goggles on. “Let me get some pencils and paper, hang on…”

Lyra turned and headed out of the kitchen. A few moments later, she rushed back in, the topaz gems on the goggles already glowing as she slid a few slips of sheet paper and a pencil onto the table. “Okay, so I’m going to write down some lyrics, and Lapis, you do the same thing. I want to see what your writing looks like.”

About thirty seconds later, there were two sheets of lyrics on the table - one in Lapis’ familiar handwriting, and one in Lyra’s curlier style. Lapis could read Lyra’s just fine - they were a simple series of rhyming couplets about the beginning of fall - but Lapis had copied down the opening stanza to Bohemian Rhapsody, and Lyra was staring at it through the goggles as if she’d never seen anything like it.

“…they don’t even look like anything!” Lyra was saying. “I mean, I guess that letter is kind of like a chair if you squint at it, but - Bon Bon, here, you look!”

Bon Bon held still as Lyra slid the goggles onto her face, then cocked an eyebrow as she examined Lapis’ writing. “Huh. Well, I guess that should help you spot anything that was written by somepony else from Amareica.”

“That’s the plan,” Lapis said, grinning.

Bon Bon looked up at Lapis, gesturing to the goggles. “So, how are you going to get up to that bookshelf with these?”

“Uh,” Lapis said. “…So far, my plan has been ‘big ladder,’ but that’s not gonna cut it. I’d still like some pegasus or griffon assistance if I can get it. Anyone with wings, really. But-”

And then, quite suddenly, an idea occurred to Lapis. It was the same idea he’d had nearly a month ago, when he showed the grappling gauntlet to Big Mac. And, as then, he considered it for only a second or two before immediately tossing it aside. Nope. Just no. Even assuming I’ve got the magic in my tank to keep them running, which I don’t, and assuming the laws of physics and aerodynamics are the same here, which they aren’t, it would take months of engineering and weeks of practice to get something like those up and running. I do not have that kind of time.

Plus, even assuming they’re not completely impractical - if I got spotted once, I’d be on headlines instantly. Rainbow Dash would be on me like green on a leaf, I’d have angry mobs of pegasi trying to stop me from inventing them out of a job, and I’d be at risk of every kind of falling-related injury possible.

A floating platform, though… if I made it slow and awkward enough, that probably shouldn’t turn too many heads. Maybe. I’d need to prioritize stability and precision, which is probably a good thing to do anyway since falling is easy…

Or, I could try asking the one pony with wings who’s made it her business to help me.

“Okay, I’ve got to ask,” Lyra began.

“Lapis, that's your dumb-idea face. What are you thinking?” Bon Bon said, at the exact same time. She and Lyra looked at each other for a second, then Bon Bon waved a hoof. “You first.”

“Right,” Lyra said, giggling. “So, Lapis. You know that swear word you use all the time?”

Lapis frowned. “Um… ‘fuck?’”

“That’s the one,” Lyra said, nodding. “What does it mean?”

Lapis’ eyes widened. “…I, uh, might need to ask some awkward questions-”

He was cut off by a flash of magenta light and a crackle like electricity, and Bon Bon’s gaze instantly locked onto a point behind Lapis. Lyra’s eyes grew wide, her ears slowly flopping back on her head. “Um…”

“Hello, Lapis!” a familiar voice announced, and though the speaker’s tone was perfectly casual, Lapis felt a shiver run down his spine nonetheless. “I’m so sorry it took this long for me to check in on you. I’ve just been really busy with my other friends recently, and… well, I might be wrong, but I feel like we may not have gotten off on the right hoof.”

“Hey, Twilight,” Lapis said, slowly turning around. “Why would you think… that…”

Twilight looked terrible. Worse than that, it was a kind of terrible that Lapis recognized, a kind he’d seen in the mirror on a few occasions. Her mane was a nightmarish mass of odd angles and bent tangles, her eyes were too wide and bloodshot to seem completely reasonable, and her skin was stretched painfully tight around the edges of her wide and toothy grin.

“…Are you okay?” Lapis asked.

Twilight glanced to the side without moving her head. “Yes. I’m doing great. Are you? I mean, that brunch party that Pinkie threw for you, it was pretty wild, right?”

“Right,” Lapis said, trying to ignore the tingle of dread that was building in his gut. “What about it?”

“Well,” Twilight said, sauntering over and leaning on the counter beside Lapis, “I mean, you went to all the trouble of avoiding me and my friends just to get away from a Pinkie party, right?”

“Yep,” Lapis said. “That’s what happened.”

“Yes, exactly,” Twilight said. “And let me tell you, I was really relieved that you didn’t take it out on Pinkie, or anypony else. I was so sure that you’d be… scared, or upset, after something like that.”

Lapis heard Bon Bon taking a slow, deep breath from somewhere behind himself, and saw Lyra backing away slowly out of the corner of his eye - whether toward Bon Bon, or away from Twilight, he wasn’t sure.

“You aren’t, right?” Twilight asked, looking Lapis right in his face, her expression one of apparent concern. “You don’t have any hard feelings about the brunch?”

“Nope,” Lapis said, growing increasingly bewildered. “Like I said, I’d been expecting something big from Pinkie for a while, and honestly, I’m just glad it’s over with.”

Twilight’s face twitched.

“Seriously, are you okay?” Lapis asked.

“Oh, I’m fine,” Twilight said, waving a hoof. “And thank you for asking, it just goes to show that you’re such a good friend. But are you okay? Are you really? Don’t you have any lingering resentment toward me or Pinkie Pie, at all? Are you sure you don’t have any problem with either of us?”

“Whaaat the buck,” Bon Bon muttered under her breath. If Twilight heard, she didn’t acknowledge it, continuing to stare at Lapis without blinking, a faintly desperate smile locked into position on her face.

“Any problems,” Twilight repeated. “Any at all.”

…The safe thing to do, Lapis knew, was to say ‘no.’ The problem was that he did, in fact, have a problem with Pinkie Pie. There was a small but vocal part of Lapis’ brain which would be more than happy to explain, at length, how much any real friendship between Twilight and himself would require not letting Pinkie Pie, or so much as a slip of her confetti, within a fifty-foot radius of his person and domicile ever again.

The rest of his brain, however, knew that this was an impossible thing to ask - and more importantly, that Twilight didn’t seem to be in a stable enough condition to give a reasonable response to his opinion. Or, for that matter, to anything else.

“Nope,” Lapis said, his ears twitching as he plastered a grin onto his face. “It’s all good.”

“Are you sure?” Twilight asked, cocking her head and leaning in closer.

“Positive,” Lapis said.

For a split second, Lapis thought he saw a genuine expression on Twilight’s face, one that looked quite a bit like mortal terror. “Absolutely no problem?”

“None whatsoever,” Lapis said. “Do… you have any problems?”

Twilight’s eyelid twitched. “Nothing major, apparently. Thank you for your time. Bye!”

Then, in another crackle of magenta light that left Lapis blinking an afterimage from his eyes, she vanished.

“…Well then,” Lapis began.

“GAAAAAH!” Twilight’s voice yelled, from just outside the kitchen window. A second later, there followed the sound of galloping hooves, which slowly faded into the distance.

For ten seconds that felt like minutes, nobody spoke. Bon Bon’s kitchen remained so silent that Lapis was tempted to hold his breath.

“Did that just happen?” Lyra eventually asked, slowly sitting down on the kitchen floor. “Like, did everypony else just see that, or am I hallucinating, or…”

“No, that happened,” Bon Bon said slowly. “…Lapis, you okay?”

“Aside from a sudden sense of impending doom?” Lapis asked, levitating his goggles off the counter. “No. I think I might go home, write a letter, and maybe hide in my basement for a while.”

“Take us with you?” Lyra asked, raising her hooves pleadingly. From her tone, Lapis couldn’t tell whether or not she was kidding.

Contrary to popular belief, dreamwalking magic was best performed while awake. This was true for any school of magic, really - a pony’s mind, when asleep, worked in a different way from when it was awake, and this meant that magic cast while its caster was asleep would also work differently. Since Princess Luna had no desire to awaken with her wings dyed hot pink again - rather the opposite, as a matter of fact - this meant that she normally had to coordinate her schedule so that she was awake when most other ponies were asleep, and sleeping when they were awake. This often presented… difficulties, especially in establishing contact with much of pony society, but such were the sacrifices Luna had to make for duty.

Today, however, Princess Luna was not having her full day’s rest, which was to say that she was having a thoroughly enjoyable day. It would, she knew, be followed by a terrible night’s work - however, Princess Luna was quite certain that her future self would derive great glory and satisfaction from facing the challenge.

Only half an hour ago, Luna had been shaken from her sleep by Celestia. Celestia had gently but briefly explained that she would be out for a while, and that in the event of an emergency, Luna was the highest authority in the castle. Luna, who had long been familiar with Celestia’s random cravings for cake, had asked Celestia to pick up something citrusy on her way back and promptly thought nothing more of it. Since then, Luna had requested and eaten a glorious late-afternoon breakfast, read halfway through an utterly bizarre novel she’d pulled from the castle library, and was now practicing some fine-detail telekinesis using her letter opener and a medium-largish chunk of chilled mozzarella.

Luna had just finished carving a muzzle into the block of cheese when the book sitting off to the side of her desk buzzed. She paused, then set the cheese and knife to the side before opening it up.

Hey, Your Highness, when are you free? Lapis had written.

Luna frowned, picking up her quill. Never. Celestia tells us she has devoted much legislation to the prevention of indentured servitude, but as yet she seems to have forgotten our own.

My condolences, Lapis replied.

Luna levitated a cracker off the platter on her desk, topping it with a fresh slice of tomato, a trimming of lettuce, and some shavings of the mozzarella she was carving. She added a light drizzle of balsamic glaze, then popped it in her mouth. ‘Tis not so bad, she wrote, munching blissfully. We are glad to serve. Didst thou petition us for curiosity alone, or is there some purpose to thy asking?

Maybe. There’s a bookshelf I need to investigate, but the problem is that there’s no floor in front of it. And it’s also in the middle of the Everfree Forest, Lapis replied a few moments later. So I guess what I’m asking is, when are you available to visit the Castle of the Two Sisters with me?

Luna froze mid-bite - or rather, she attempted to, and instead managed to bite her own tongue. She clapped her hoof to the side of her mouth, sucking in a breath with which she intended to utter a string of curses. However, a few fragments of cracker found their way into her lungs, and so Luna found herself having a vicious coughing fit instead.

When, a few moments later, Luna stood back up and got a drink of water, she saw that Lapis had already written a follow-up line, and was midway through writing a second. That’s probably a massive breach of protocol or etiquette or something, now that I think about it. Forget I asked, read the first line.

Just out of curiosity, how does somepony go about requesting a stay of execution? the second line read, in slightly messier writing than the first.

“WHY WOULD YOU ASK HER THAT?!” Lyra screeched, clapping her hooves to the side of her head.

“I don’t know!” Lapis said, sitting back before his workbench and rubbing his temple with a hoof. “She’d know, right?!”

“So would I,” Bon Bon said, in a considerably calmer tone than the other two ponies in Lapis’ basement. “And I’m also not the pony who would execute you. …Though, I seriously doubt that she’s going to do that.”

“Are you kidding?!” Lyra said, throwing her hooves in the air. “He just asked Princess Luna to do something! For himself! He didn’t even make it sound official!” Lyra sat down on the basement floor, her ears flopping back. “Oh Celestia. Lapis is going to the moon.”

“The… moon?” Lapis asked, his eyes widening as Lyra began to hyperventilate.

“No, you’re not going to the moon,” Bon Bon sighed. “This is not the kind of offense that get ponies sent to the moon. Maybe some Canterlot nobles might try that, if they had the option, but the Princesses wouldn’t be Princesses if they couldn’t take these things in stride.”

Lapis relaxed a little, and Lyra paused. “You’re sure?”

“Yes, I’m sure, Lyra,” Bon Bon said, putting her hoof on Lyra’s shoulder. “Remember when we met Princess Celestia? Lapis made a good half-dozen breaches of etiquette, and the Princess just thought it was funny. If Luna’s anything like her, she’ll write back with a witty little quip as soon as she’s done having a polite little chuckle.”

…and if thou dost again accuse us of permitting such tyrannical injustice as execution, Luna wrote, we shall ensure that thee wishest thyself correct.

Then, Luna took a deep breath, examined the piece of scrap paper upon which she’d written her reply, and firmly crossed out the more threatening lines. She paid special attention to the last, drawing her pen over it three times before she took a deep breath and looked over the revised message.

This sort of writing and revision was a habit of Luna’s, one she’d picked up over centuries of standing as the first line of defense between her sister’s time and the scrabbling contracts of avaricious fools. Luna dearly wished her method had some transferability to conversation, but alas, the spoken word was rather more difficult to strike through and place in a rubbish bin.

Firstly, Luna wrote (this time on the book), it was we who wrote the laws that forbade execution, more than a millennium ago. Banishment, or else petrification, are all that thou need fear, and we advise thee to simply avoid those actions which might give thee cause to fear them. And, on the off-chance that thy question was in jest, we request that thou keepest thy humor to subjects with consequences less permanent.

Secondly, protocol does not apply to thee, save if you should enter military service. Thy concern is with etiquette. Considering our mission to assist thee in recovering a path to thy home, thy request was acceptable. However, if in future thou must maintain propriety, we recommend that thou merely describe that mission, state thy requirements for any accompanying ponies, and allow those ponies who might fit the bill to volunteer themselves. Much as we wish we could give you further guidance on conduct, we fear ourselves more capable of recognizing failures than of cultivating success - we recommend finding a guide, or a guidebook.

And, in regards to thy excursion…

Luna hesitated, wincing as she dipped her quill in her inkwell. At Luna’s request, Celestia had recently explained the degree of fear that most ponies held for the Everfree Forest, and for the ruins within it. Luna… had been the stuff of such legends before, but never among her own subjects. Criminals’ fear, Luna appreciated, along with that of greedy nobility and ravening monsters.

But the fear of her own ponies…

Luna struck another line through the final threat of her first draft, then resumed writing to Lapis.

…We are unsure, yet, of whether we shall be able to join thee. To perform our duties minding the dreams of our subjects, we must sleep through the day, and awake instead at night. Plan thy excursion as if we shall not be present, and notify us when all preparations are made, Luna replied. Should we possess the strength and time to spare, then hunting we shall go.

Lapis grimaced, then began writing up a thank-you note. Lyra, meanwhile, was lying on her back on the basement floor, where she’d collapsed with relief as soon as Lapis had announced Luna’s forgiveness. Bon Bon was sitting just beside Lapis, looking over his shoulder as he wrote.

“…So, uh,” Lyra eventually said. “Remind me again how you became pen pals with Princess Luna?”

“The cursed book wasn’t actually cursed,” Lapis said. “Apparently, Luna just likes that look.”

Bon Bon cocked an eyebrow. “The cursed book that you found in the Castle of the Two Sisters?”

“That’s the one,” Lapis replied, finishing his reply and closing the book. “Luna put it where I could find it on purpose. She got sick of being ignored in my dreams, and thought that I might respond to her if I didn’t know it was her writing back.” Lapis waved a hoof as he levitated the goggles onto his face, picking up his own notebook. “The ‘thees’ and ‘thous’ tipped me off pretty quickly, though.”

“Well, that’s convoluted,” Bon Bon replied.

“Yeah, but I’m definitely not complaining,” Lapis said, looking over the page he’d written on earlier that day. “As far as minimal exposure goes, this is basically the best thing I could ask for. Okay, so this sentence here, I’ve written twice - once in English, and once in Equish. It uses every character in the English alphabet, but I’m not sure the translation is one-to-”

“Hang on,” Bon Bon said, holding up a hoof. “Why’s it so quiet?”

“Yeah, I noticed that as soon as I got down the stairs,” Lyra said, nodding. “It was like the whole village just stopped.”

“Oh, this place is magically soundproofed,” Lapis said. “Whoever built this basement, they didn’t want to annoy the neighbors with blacksmithing noises. No sound from inside gets out, none from outside gets in.”

“How considerate,” Bon Bon muttered, looking warily around the room. “I’m going to go outside for a little bit, see if whatever was going on with Twilight is over now.”

“Wait, we all need to go with you, remember?” Lyra said, getting to her hooves. “We’ll get locked in here otherwise.”

“Right,” Bon Bon said, looking over at Lapis from halfway up the stairs. “So, did you ever figure out who made this place? Because I’m starting to wonder myself.”

“Nope,” Lapis said, following Lyra up the stairs and into the closet. “Again, not going to look a - uh, not going to temp fate.”

There were a couple seconds of silence as Lapis shut the secret door and opened the normal one, then Bon Bon sighed. “Lapis, I don’t know how to tell you this, but I’m really not sure your magic accident was completely accidental.”

Lapis groaned. “Bon Bon, I’ve just got really bad luck, alright? Always have.”

Bon Bon sat down at the table next to Lapis’ window. “Bad luck? Lapis, between this house, the ‘mimic,-’”

“His name’s Chester,” Lapis said, gesturing to the wardrobe that was sitting against the wall by the hallway entrance.

“-Gara Pinion, the Nightmare, and now Princess Luna,” Bon Bon continued, “you’ve been a magnet for mysteries and loose ends ever since you got here.”

“But I haven’t been solving them so much as either tolerating them, or beating them off with a stick,” Lapis said. “Bon Bon, I’m not some secret hero, alright?”

“You…” Bon Bon said, in a slow and clearly exasperated tone. “Know… A… Prophecy.”

“Not directly.”

“You fought a Nightmare.”

“And would’ve lost without you and Lyra.”

“Uh, guys?” Lyra said.

“You were able to hide from Pinkie Pie.”

“And it nearly drove both of us insane.”

“Guys.”

“You’re in touch with Princess Luna! The immortal alicorn who moves the moon!”

“Only because-”

“GUYS!” Lyra shouted. Lapis and Bon Bon broke off, looking over at Lyra, and she waved over to the window. “There’s a stampede or something coming this way, look!”

Lapis looked, and sure enough, there was a crowd of ponies barreling down Nutmeg Way. They were moving at a fast gallop, following a tall, rusty-red Earth-pony-

“Is that Big Mac?” Lapis asked, squinting.

“I think so, Lyra said.

“He’s holding something, look,” Bon Bon said.

Lapis frowned, looking through his goggles at Big Mac. He was holding a… doll, or something?

Then, the outline of the doll suddenly flared with pink light. An instant later, the topaz crystals on Lapis’ goggles lit up like a sulfur-yellow flash-bang. Lapis yelped and stumbled backward, tripping over the leg of his chair and falling back onto… another chair, which rocked back and forth as Lapis tried to scrub the stinging afterimage from his eyes. He dimly heard the door opening, and two sets of hoofsteps galloping out of the storefront, but was too busy being in pain to voice any inquiries.

Lapis opened his eyes to find that, while his vision was still tinged purple by the afterimage, he could still see. He’d landed rump-first on a squat, sturdy rocking chair, which Lapis guessed was Chester, based on the sudden absence of the wardrobe. Bon Bon and Lyra were nowhere to be seen, and Lapis’ door was slowly swinging shut as he watched.

“…What just happened?” Lapis muttered, slowly climbing to his hooves. He would’ve called for Nikki, but he hadn’t seen her in a few days - for all he knew, Nikki had flown south for the winter. “Uh, thanks, Chester. Did you see where they went?”

When next Lapis blinked, Chester was once again a chest, and was propping Lapis’ door open. Lapis nodded, then galloped out the door and looked down the street.

The stampede was still out there, it had passed his house and was now heading toward the center of Ponyville - and, to Lapis’ dismay, Lyra and Bon Bon were trying to join it, galloping just a few paces behind the rest of the crowd.

“Uh-oh,” Lapis muttered, and then he started galloping after them, trying not to inhale the dust from the stampede. There was a horrible niggling feeling in his gut again, the one that meant he was forgetting something, but he didn’t have the time to figure it out. The crowd rounded a corner, starting down one of the larger roads nearby, and Lapis cut the corner between several of the houses.

Lapis emerged just in front of the crowd, and this time he caught a better look at the doll in Big Mac’s mouth. It was a donkey, or more likely a pony, and it looked… “well-loved,” to put it politely. The doll’s outline flared pink again, and Lapis realized he was still wearing the goggles just in time to shut his eyes. He still saw the resulting flash of light through his eyelids, and a half-dozen different shouts from the crowd confirmed that the goggles were still functioning as he’d built them to - but hey, at least I didn’t use rubies.

Lapis briefly considered removing the goggles as he opened his eyes, but as he saw that the stampede was continuing, he decided that he’d better figure out what was going on, first. Lapis started galloping with the crowd, deliberately falling behind until he was next to Bon Bon and Lyra.

“So why are we running?” Lapis shouted over the thunder of galloping hooves.

Lyra looked over at him, and Lapis felt his eyes widen in shock - her pupils had been replaced by throbbing, pink hearts. “I’m gonna get that doll!” she exclaimed, and quite suddenly she put on a burst of speed, shoving her way into the bulk of the crowd.

“Oh, like hay you are!” Bon Bon yelled, and Lapis just barely had time to see that she had hearts in her eyes, too. Bon Bon sprung forward with a leap that was nearly a pounce, landing atop an enormously muscular pegasus and using him as a springboard to jump forward again, nearly colliding with Big Mac-

“Nope,” Big Mac said, taking three steps to the right without slowing down. Bon Bon missed Big Mac entirely, tucking into a roll that left her smack in the middle of the crowd by the time she got back to her hooves. Even still, she was able to rise into a gallop, keeping pace with the rest of the crowd as they rounded another corner.

Lapis gaped, then shook his head and tried to figure out what was going on. The doll’s definitely magic, it’s tried to cast a spell at me twice. My goggles were able to catch the spell, meaning it must be aimed at ponies’ eyes - so, that means the doll is probably to blame for the whole heart-eyes thing. If I destroy the doll, maybe that will break the spell?

Lapis swallowed, then set his jaw and hung a left toward another alleyway. Worth a shot.

Now, if only I knew any destructive spells.

Lapis cut another corner, snagging an oil lantern from beside a nearby door as he passed, frantically twiddling the knob that would raise the lantern’s wick. The lantern was already beginning to burn brighter as Lapis emerged near the front of the crowd, deliberately not looking toward Big Mac as he pulled up alongside the larger pony.

“Hey, Big Mac,” Lapis panted, waiting for the lantern’s flame to burn just a little bit brighter. “Long time, no see.”

“E-yup,” Big Mac said, out of the corner of his mouth.

“So, what’s going on?” Lapis asked.

“Gotta get this doll.”

“Cool, cool,” Lapis said. “Can I borrow it real quick?”

“Nope.”

Lapis grimaced. “You sure?”

“E-yup.”

“Alright,” Lapis said. “Hey, I need to talk to you real quick. You mind looking this way?”

Lapis turned to look at Big Mac, at the exact moment that Big Mac glanced over at him. Lapis registered two things at once - first, there were hearts in Big Mac’s eyes too, and second, that the outline of the doll was already flaring pink again.

“Sorry about this,” Lapis said, and he shut his eyes just as the goggles flared with yellow light again. Lapis was only mildly surprised to hear Big Mac actually whinny, but he still took the opportunity to yank the doll from Big Mac’s mouth and jam it into the top of the oil lantern.

The fire in the oil lantern, instead of burning the doll, promptly snuffed itself out in a silent, pathetic puff of smoke. Lapis had precisely two seconds to berate himself for forgetting the chemistry of fire before Big Mac shoulder-checked him, snatching the doll out of the oil lantern midair as Lapis flew off to the side.

Lapis landed on his side atop something wooden, which rocked back from the impact. He covered his head with his hooves as the crowd thundered past, coughing once from being out of breath, and then several more times from all the dust, his eyes watering behind his goggles as he struggled to regain control of his stinging lungs.

Lapis wrenched his eyes open, and discovered that he’d managed to land atop a bench made from dark reddish wood, which had been fitted with runners like those of a rocking chair. He must’ve hit his head, because for a second Lapis thought he saw two Bon Bons in the crowd - then his vision cleared, and Big Mac and the rest of the crowd were already a good fifty feet down the road, rounding a corner out of sight as Lapis watched.

Lapis staggered to his feet, and was about to start running after them again, except when he blinked, the bench was suddenly in front of him. Lapis frowned in confusion for a second, then recognized the tint of the wood. “Oh. Uh, thanks again, Chester.”

He stepped around the bench and took off running after the crowd again, squinting against the dust cloud - and, as soon as Lapis blinked, he slammed face-first into a reddish-brown grandfather clock, which wobbled in place just as Lapis staggered backward. Neither of them fell over, and Lapis winced as he rubbed his face, glaring at Chester. “Cut it out, I’m trying to steal a doll here!”

Lapis rounded the grandfather clock and started galloping again. The next time he blinked, however, he opened his eyes to find himself running directly into an open wardrobe, which tipped backwards as Lapis collided with its back wall. The doors swung shut, and Lapis was trapped inside, in the dark, as the wardrobe fell backward. He slammed, hard, against the back of the wardrobe - then, to his surprise, the entire wardrobe lurched in place, pressing him against the back before bouncing him off the walls like a pinball.

The wardrobe’s movement came to an abrupt stop, and Lapis yelped in surprise as he was pitched forward, bursting through the wardrobe’s doors and falling forward to land - miraculously - on his hooves, which thunked against the hardwood floor as he staggered onto a familiar green rug.

“Chester, what the-!” Lapis began, looking backward - only to find that the wardrobe was gone, and in the place where it had been, there was only a portrait of a mustached griffon smirking at him. Lapis realized that he was back inside his own shop, and he looked to the front door to find that Chester was once again a grandfather clock, positioned to prop Lapis’ door closed from the outside.

“Hey!” Lapis shouted, rushing over to his door and trying to push it open. Unfortunately, Chester made for a heavier grandfather clock than Lapis had expected, and the door barely even rattled in its frame as Lapis tried to budge it aside. “Chester, c’mon, dammit! Scoot! I’ve gotta get out there!”

Chester refused to move, and Lapis groaned. Okay, so Chester’s betrayed me. Great. I need a new plan, now. He spun and rushed into the closet, tearing open the secret door and nearly falling down the stairs. Lapis reached his workbench, frantically looking over the books at his disposal. The first one that caught his eye was Luna’s book, and he promptly opened it, grabbed his pencil, and touched it to the page.

RED ALERT SEND FUCKIGN HELP

Luna munched down the last of her crackers, sighed in contentment, then got up from her cushion and stretched, pointing her wings straight up as she arched her back like a cat. She walked over to her latest painting, reached for her palate of paint, and-

Lapis’ book buzzed again upon her desk, and Luna paused, then set her palate aside and levitated the book over to her side. When she opened it to the newest page, she paused, a frown wrinkling her brow. Instead of writing in Equish, Lapis had sent her a number of strange runes, which Harmony somehow seemed disinclined to translate for her.

Luna frowned, then picked up her quill and wrote.

Lapis stared down at the book, utterly bewildered, as Luna replied with a series of small, neat pictograms. Then it clicked, and Lapis facehoofed as he took off his goggles.

We fail to discern thy meaning, Luna had written. Might we ask thee to write back in Equish?

What I meant was ‘send help,’ Lapis replied. There’s this gross old doll, and everypony who looks at it gets hearts in their eyes. The whole town is chasing after the thing. Also, there’s an overprotective clock holding my door shut.

Ah. Luna seemed to hesitate for several moments, and Lapis took the opportunity to rummage through the other books on the workbench, flipping open Magic 4 Dummies for all of a few seconds before tossing it aside. While we are uncertain what to do about thy clock, we expect the doll represents a rogue Want-It-Need-It charm, from thy description. We have news on this front both good and bad.

Bad news first, Lapis wrote, grabbing his own notebook and skimming through it at high speed.

Our dear sister, from the sound of it, has yet failed to arrive and resolve the matter, Luna wrote, as Lapis turned a page of his notebook and froze in his tracks as he saw what he’d copied there, by quill, less than a month after the Summer Sun Celebration.

However, as she departed from Canterlot near forty-five minutes ago, we suspect she shall arrive quite soon.

Lapis grimaced as he read Luna’s reply, then picked up his pencil again, levitating his notebook to his side as he wrote. Unless you have an ETA more specific than ‘quite soon,’ that isn’t soon enough. Both of my friends are stuck chasing that thing. I’m going to try something, wish me luck.

Lapis set the book aside even as Luna’s reply began to scrawl itself across the page. He took a deep breath, then set his jaw as he slowly and deliberately ascended the basement stairs with his notebook floating before his face, skimming past the list of strongly-recommended supplementary reading. Never tried making a wormhole before, he thought, but Twilight does it all the time. It can’t be that hard, right?

He read and reread the teleportation spell on his notebook, the one he’d copied from The Horn is Quicker than the Carriage, then stood directly behind his own front door as he slid his goggles back into place over his eyes. Besides, it’s not like I’m trying to get to the other side of town. Just to the front door of Town Hall. I’ll get to the highest window, see where the stampede is, and then… I don’t know, drop the doll down the first chimney I see that has smoke coming out of it. That should work.

Besides, I’ll need the practice, before I try working up to… however far away Ohio is.

He took a slow, deep breath and shut his eyes, imagining the doorstep of Town Hall as he carefully reached out with his magic. Lucky thing this spell doesn't ask me to think about the math, or I'd be screwed...

Here we go. As all the world is cloth, so the cloth will fold.

Almost immediately, his horn started to buzz, and Lapis’ ears twitched at the unfamiliar sensation of his skull vibrating. He did his best to ignore it, gritting his teeth and focusing on the incantation. As I command magic, to my will the cloth will mold.

Lapis’ horn began to vibrate more intensely, with enough force that a low, whining wineglass-hum filled the room, a throbbing ache developing where Lapis’ horn met his skull. The world folds all around me, here is touching where I see…

The hum of Lapis’ horn began to rise as Lapis felt something in his magical grip, and he saw the glow of his horn flaring buttery-yellow through his closed eyelids. Where I was unfolds away… he thought, picturing his workshop vanishing around him, the doorstep of Town Hall taking its place. I’m where I want to be.

There was a crack like lightning, and Lapis held still as every drop of magic in his body seemed to lurch out of him through his horn, the flare of heat in his body replaced with a sudden, harsh chill like walking into a freezer. His horn’s hum rose to a fever-pitch, there was a crack like lightning, and-

It felt like Lapis was made of Jell-O, and he was being sucked horn-first through the nozzle of a shop-vac. There was no up or down, but Lapis wasn’t spinning, either - gravity was simply gone, and there was no direction but forward. His eyes were as firmly closed as if they were glued shut, but everything was so tight around Lapis that he found himself praying his eyes wouldn’t open, as he accelerated faster and faster toward whatever the magic of his horn had grabbed onto-

And suddenly, it all opened up. Lapis gasped for breath, his eyes snapping open, and he found that he had arrived on the doorstep of Town Hall. Lapis frantically looked himself over, patting down his own head, and found that while his horn was sore and his entire body was numb, he still seemed to be in one piece. …Okay then, I’m never doing that ever again.

Lapis telekinetically reached for the handle of Town Hall’s door, meaning to pull it open so he could walk inside. Nothing happened, and then a few sparks shot from the tip of his horn. Oh, I must’ve used all my mana. …Shouldn’t I be in a lot of pain right now, or something?

Then, the ground did something very strange. Slowly at first, and then very quickly, it flipped sideways like a pancake and rose toward Lapis’ face, so quickly that he barely had time to frown before it made contact with his head. And then, all of a sudden, everything went dark…

…

…“TWILIGHT SPARKLE!”

“Pancake!” Lapis yelped, scrambling off the ground. He staggered, and nearly fell over again - he was dizzy, and the numbness was already fading from his body, making way for the splitting headaches from his horn and the side of his head to chisel their way into the rest of his skull.

Lapis stared around, wincing and clutching his hoof to the side of his head. It was sunset now, which was a slight problem. Princess Celestia had arrived, which was a much bigger problem - she was descending toward the hills just outside Ponyville, her horn radiating sunlight, her glare visible even through the setting sun’s.

It was at this point that Lapis realized that the Princess was flying toward Twilight, and then he remembered why, along with which episode he was now in. Lapis groaned, then facehoofed, which immediately intensified his headache.

Slowly, carefully, he started down the street in the general direction of Princess Celestia.

A few minutes later, he arrived. The Princess had long since flown off - Lapis wasn’t sure where to - but the rest of town was dispersing from the area with much less haste, the less-athletic ponies nursing their bruises as they hobbled back toward their homes. It only took Lapis a few seconds to spot Bon Bon, who was being carried on the backs of Big Mac and Lyra.

“Are you-” Lapis asked, his eyes widening as he hurried over.

“Fine,” Bon Bon muttered. “Sprained my ankles, that’s all. I’ll be walking again by tomorrow.”

“Nope,” Big Mac said. “You’re gonna rest through tomorrow, if Ah have to hog-tie ya to yer bed.”

“Seconded,” Lyra panted, straining under the back half of Bon Bon’s body. “And after that… I’m putting you on a diet.”

“Hey!” Bon Bon snapped. “That is pure muscle back there, and the next pony who implies otherwise is going to get bucked by it!”

“Well, I was going to help Lyra carry you, but you just made it weird,” Lapis said, cocking an eyebrow at Bon Bon.

“Yeah, way to go, Bon Bon,” Lyra muttered, grinning as Lapis got in place to support Bon Bon’s midsection - then stopping, as Lapis tried to support Bon Bon’s weight and immediately buckled to the ground. “Wait, are you okay?”

“I’m good,” Lapis muttered, shaking his head as he tried to dislodge the haze of static that seemed to be filling his brain. His horn issued a few fizzling sparks, and Lapis waved them away with a hoof. “Ignore those.”

“Nope,” Big Mac said, and a few seconds later, Lapis found himself slung over Big Mac’s back like a sack of potatoes. “Sorry ‘bout knockin’ you off the road earlier.”

“It’s cool,” Lapis said, waving a hoof. “Curses happen, not your fault.”

“Curses?” Bon Bon asked, cocking an eyebrow from next to Lapis. “Wait, you know what happened- actually, no, what happened to you?”

“Uh, well, I got locked in my house, so I tried out a new spell, and it kinda completely emptied out my tank,” Lapis said.

“O-kay,” Lyra said, concern audible in her tone. “What kind of spell?”

“Teleporting.”

There was a second’s delay, and Lapis suddenly realized that the other three ponies were all looking at him. Big Mac and Bon Bon were just cocking one eyebrow each, and Lyra was gaping in wide-eyed horror.

“…For what it’s worth,” Lapis said, “it worked, and I won’t do it again.”

“Good plan,” Lyra said. A few seconds later, they started walking again, making it three whole steps forward before Lyra spoke up again. “Y’know what, no. We’re not letting that go. Nope. Lapis, you teleported? Like, honest-to-Celestia, first-you’re-there-and-now-you’re-here teleported?”

“I mean, I don’t think ‘teleport’ is the right word,” Lapis said, shrugging atop Big Mac’s back. Big Mac hadn’t stopped walking as Lyra spoke, barely even breaking a sweat beneath Lapis’ and Bon Bon’s combined weight. “It’s more like conjuring a wormhole, which is several times worse for the space-time continuum, but since pegasi can fly the laws of physics clearly only matter when magic is looking the other way.”

“Is he delirious?” Bon Bon asked.

Lyra shook her head. “No, I think he’s just super mana-burnt. Uh, Big Mac, once we’ve dropped Bon Bon off, could you aim for Lapis’ house?”

“Hey,” Lapis said, frowning. “I’m not incoherent, alright?”

“Of course not,” Lyra said, soothingly. “You’ve just had a very long day.”

Lapis sighed, and settled down for the ride.

A few minutes later, Big Mac had arrived at Lapis’ shop, where Lyra had promptly sat Lapis at the table by the window, and ordered him to remain there. Chester had somehow secured another bag of shimmerberry tea, which Big Mac had wasted no time in getting started, while Lyra had sat herself across the table from Lapis and stared at him, without speaking, for an entire minute.

“…Is there something on my face?” Lapis asked, when he couldn’t ignore it any longer.

Lyra sighed. “Well, no, I’m just… trying to figure out how you didn’t learn what I’m about to explain.”

“It’s about the teleporting, right?”

“That too,” Lyra said, sighing again. “Okay, let’s just start there. Teleporting is supposed to be… tricky. Like, super-tricky. You need to learn a whole bunch of stuff that isn’t even related to magic - not memorize it, but actually learn it - to even understand how teleporting works. Like, my roommate in Uni-Versity-”

Lapis winced.

“-took an entire class for figuring out how teleporting is supposed to work,” Lyra said. “I tried to help her with her homework a few times, but… well, all I managed to pick up was that it was some kind of gravity-magic origami.”

“Gravity,” Lapis said. “Okay, that makes sense.”

“Not to me,” Lyra said, shrugging. “Gravity magic in general is… weird, and tricky, and it has a lot of oddball spells, but teleportation is definitely the oddest ball of the bunch. And, even if you can figure out how to cast a teleportation spell, they’re way too draining to practically use - unless you’ve got, like, a really high affinity for gravity magic, which is generally something most ponies don’t have.”

“Well, I definitely don’t have that,” Lapis said. “Twilight has to, though.”

“Oh, yeah. A hundred percent,” Lyra said, rolling her eyes and grinning. “I figured that one out during the brunch. Like, you don’t just say that you mix your telekinesis with gravity unless you’re really oblivious or trying to show off. Which kinda wraps us back around to-”

“You done bringin’ Lapis up to speed on all the magic schoolin’ he missed?” Big Mac asked, entering the room with the handle of Lapis’ kettle held between his teeth.

“I think she’s getting there,” Lapis replied. “Hang on, I’ll grab the mugs-”

Lapis tried to reach out with his telekinesis, and was instantly rewarded with a flurry of sparks from his horn and a spike of hot, throbbing pain in his forehead. “Never mind. …Ow.”

“I’ve got it,” Lyra said, igniting her horn. “So, anyway. The reason my roommate took that class was because she wanted to get into the royal magic academy, and maybe even train under Princess Celestia someday. Now, there’s completely different bars for those two things, but just to get yourself into the Academy, you’ve got to prove to their Admissions Committee that you have a… significantly above-average degree of magical power. There are eight different options, one for each school of magic, and… well, the test for anypony crazy enough to use gravity magic is teleportation.”

“…Are you telling me I just accidentally wrote a master’s thesis?” Lapis asked, as a mug floated onto the table in front of him.

“Oh, no, it’s way worse,” Lyra replied, pouring the shimmerberry tea into Lapis’ mug. “I’m telling you that you just accidentally got admitted into the Royal Academy of Magic-”

Lyra glanced up behind Lapis, and her eyes grew wide as dinner plates. “-Whoa-oh, gosh.”

“That’s quite the accident,” a voice said, as Big Mac knelt on Lapis’ rug, Lyra scrambling off her chair to kneel beside him. “I believe that makes it twice in a row you’ve surprised me during a visit, Lapis Print.”

Oh, you’re kidding me, Lapis thought as he hurried out of his chair and into a bow of his own. “Your Highness?”

“You all may rise,” said Princess Celestia, stepping the rest of the way into Lapis’ shop and looking around the room. “Big Macintosh, what a surprise. This year’s batch of cider was exquisite. And Lapis, I love what you’ve done with the place. Very cozy, and the painting is a nice touch - Von Hoofber, I believe?”

“So I’m told. -Uh, thank you, Your Highness,” Lapis said, carefully climbing to his hooves, trying and failing to prevent his knees from shaking. “Can I offer you some shimmerberry tea?”

“Certainly,” Princess Celestia said, not taking her eyes off Lapis as she smiled. “But first, my sister asked that I check in on you. She believed you might have done something… drastic, in response to the actions taken by my student today involving a Mr. Smartie Pants doll.”

“Oh, he might’ve,” Lyra mumbled, as she levitated another mug from the kitchen and filled it from the kettle. Big Mac glanced to the side, then carefully adjusted a lump under his bandana that Lapis hadn’t noticed until just then.

“Well, Your Highness, uh…” Lapis swallowed. “A few hours ago, I learned that I had the non-magic education to know what a teleportation spell does, without the magic education to know why I shouldn’t try to do it.”

“And you succeeded, despite this?” Princess Celestia asked, taking a seat and levitating her mug of shimmerberry tea to her lips. Even sitting, she was at least twice Lapis’ height.

“Yes, Your Highness,” Lapis said. “…And then I immediately passed out, and didn’t awake until you arrived in town.”

“Hm,” Princess Celestia said, sipping her tea. “I believe that qualifies as ‘drastic.’ No lasting harm done, I hope?”

“Just mana-burn, Your Highness,” Lyra said, and her smile very nearly wasn't a nervous grimace. “We’re taking care of him.”

“Excellent,” the Princess said, smiling. “I wish you luck. That said, the Royal Academy has updated its admission criteria in recent years, to discourage prospective students from endangering themselves through pushing their limits beyond their affinity. Additionally, there is a written component.”

“Right,” Lapis said, and he felt his ears try to droop with relief before he jerked them upright. So, I didn’t accidentally pass admission, meaning this isn’t really a great big giant thing. Good.

“However,” Princess Celestia added, raising her mug. “Should you be interested in filling the gaps in your knowledge, I happen to know an excellent tutor.”

Uh-oh.

“I’m flattered by your offer, Your Highness,” Lapis said slowly, Princess Celestia continuing to watch Lapis as she sipped her tea. “I’d be happy to accept your recommendation, but I don’t think I can follow up on it anytime soon.”

“I expected as much,” the Princess said, lowering her mug again. “Luna has informed me about the matter of your debt. The Royal Academy’s tuition and financial aid packages are quite extensive, you know. Depending on your needs and performance, you may even qualify for our loan repayment program.”

Through the haze of mana-burn, Lapis registered the words ‘loan repayment,’ and his eyes snapped wide open as a burst of adrenaline flared in his veins. “…Your what?”

“Our loan repayment program,” Princess Celestia repeated, and though Lapis could see the calculating look in her eyes, he couldn’t deny the warmth behind them. “Let me assure you, it has a long and respected history - why, it goes back for at least two minutes now.”

Lapis’ brain short-circuited, and the Princess’ smirk flashed over top of her mug for barely an instant before she took another sip of her tea. “Of course, you would need to pass admissions first, which brings us back to your tutelage. I completely understand that the life of a repair-pony, especially in Ponyville, is somewhat lacking in free time, especially for somepony already involved in a research project. That being the case, the tutor I have in mind is quite effective at getting a lot of work done in very little time, and I expect uncovering a route of travel to A-mare-ica will prove much easier with her aid-”

“With all due respect, Your Highness, this sounds a little too good to be true,” Lapis blurted out. The Princess didn’t even seem surprised, smiling regally down upon Lapis as he spoke. “What are you hoping to get from all this- from me?”

“Myself, personally?” Princess Celestia asked, raising a hoof to her chest. “Forgiveness for the trouble my student has caused you, and the hope that one more of my little ponies may rest without fear. However, I imagine that Equestria has much to gain from any research or design projects you pursue.” She gestured to Lapis’ face, and Lapis suddenly realized that he was still wearing his goggles. “To that end, I believe your continued education is a goal worth supporting. I can see you still need time to think, however, so don’t let me pressure you.”

“Uh, right,” Lapis said, as Celestia rose and set her mug aside. “Thank you very much, Your Highness.”

“My pleasure,” Princess Celestia said, smiling as she turned toward the door. “Thank you for the tea. I wish you a speedy recovery, and look forward to seeing you again.”

And, a few steps later, she was gone.

“…Oh, gosh,” Lyra breathed.

“E-yup,” Big Mac agreed.

“Excuse me just a second, please,” Lapis said, and he turned and headed for the closet, shutting the door behind himself and starting down the basement stairs.

There were a lot of emotions that Lapis was feeling just then. Three of them in particular were stronger than the rest, however - the weakest of the bunch was a little lingering irritation with Twilight over the Mr. Smartie Pants Doll event, but Lapis had basically put that out of his mind by the time he reached the bottom of the stairs.

Second place, then, belonged to an emotion that was somewhere in between dread and hysterical panic, brought on by the attention of Princess Celestia. Lapis had two problems with her, at present - the potential alteration of the timeline, and the question of what Her Royal Highness really wanted from Lapis. Children’s cartoon or not, nobody just handed out a boon like this unless there was something bigger they wanted in exchange. Worst-case scenario, Celestia had somehow cracked that Lapis was from another dimension, and she'd just provided an excuse for having him supervised, tested, and possibly shipped off to a laboratory when nopony was looking - and, while Lapis couldn't really bring himself to believe such a scenario was possible, he could certainly imagine some unpleasant middle-grounds.

The strongest emotion of the bunch, though, was by far the worst. Despite Lapis’ best efforts to the contrary, he was considering the terms of Celestia’s offer even as he walked into the center of his workshop. And the more he thought about how much he could stand to gain, here, the more he was filled with a frankly terrifying amount of genuine hope.

The joy and the fear had been fighting with each other ever since Princess Celestia had first made her offer, and Lapis needed to do something about them, now, or else they’d just charge him up for some new form of magic mental breakdown. Luckily, Lapis had an idea, inspired by a chapter in Twilight’s book on Cascades and his own venting session in the woods a week earlier - and here in the basement, Lapis had all the soundproofing he needed to put this method to use, hopefully expressing both his warring emotions at once.

Lapis took a slow, deep breath in, then tipped his head back. This is so stupid, he thought.

“-AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!” Lapis screamed.

He paused, checking over his emotional state again. The hope was undiminished, and he now felt faintly embarrassed, but to his surprise the fear had basically settled down. He shook his head, bemused, and made his way back up into his storefront.

Big Mac seemed to have taken his leave, but Lyra was still sitting in the living room, briefly looking up as Lapis pushed open the closet door before taking a sudden interest in the texture of the rug. Lapis ignored this, sitting on his chair and downing a few mouthfuls of his now-lukewarm shimmerberry tea.

“Big Mac headed back for Sweet Apple Acres,” Lyra explained, nodding her head in the direction of the Apple family orchards. “He’s, uh… He said he wanted to check whether there was any trampling there, but honestly I think he doesn’t know how to apologize to you.”

“…For shoulder-checking me?” Lapis said, frowning. “He already apologized.”

“No, I mean for his part in the whole brunch incident,” Lyra said, her ears flopping halfway back. “He had nothing to do with how far overboard Pinkie went, but he was definitely the pony who got Applejack involved.”

“Oh,” Lapis said. “Yeah, that’s… he’s blameless. No apology required.”

Lyra shrugged. “Well, yeah, but he doesn’t know that, and now he thinks you might be gone before he gets the chance to apologize, so… well, I’d be panicking about how to apologize, if I were him.”

Lapis nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, I’d better drop by his place at some point.

“…So, uh,” Lyra continued. “You know what happened? With the doll and stuff?"

"Twilight," Lapis confirmed. "Her Highness had asked Twilight to write a friendship report every week - don't ask, that's a whole conversation on its own - and Twilight couldn't find a friendship problem to write about. She's scared of deadlines for some reason, so... she figured making a friendship problem on purpose, and then solving it, would do the trick."

"Uh-huh," Lyra said, her face scrunching briefly as she tried to process all that. After a few seconds, she shook her head, then looked directly to Lapis. "You realize Bon Bon is never gonna give up her idea now, right? About you being destined for big stuff?”

“…Yeah,” Lapis said, and he swallowed another mouthful of tea.

“And you’re not worried about it?” Lyra asked, cocking her head in surprise.

“Oh, I’m terrified,” Lapis said, setting down his mug. “At this point, though, I don’t think there’s much I can do about it. Her Highness didn’t seem like she’s willing to take ‘no’ for an answer.”

“Well, she probably would,” Lyra said, shrugging. “…But I don’t think I’d give you the chance to say it, and I know Bon Bon sure won’t.”

Lapis cocked an eyebrow. “What?”

Lyra giggled. “Lapis, a royally-recommended tutor for admission exams to the Royal Magic Academy is the kind of opportunity… well, a lot of ponies would feel silly even for dreaming about it, let’s put it that way.”

“There’s still the whole fate-of-the-future thing to worry about,” Lapis said. “…But I guess that some magical education would make that easier to handle, right?”

“Right,” Lyra said.

Lapis nodded. “So, I guess that brings us to my biggest worry about this whole thing.” He cleared his throat, staring down into the depths of his sparkling purple mug of tea, then looked up at Lyra.

“What do you think the chances are,” he said, “that the tutor she’ll recommend is Twilight?”

There was a moment’s silence. Then, Lyra snorted, breaking into a giggling fit.

“None,” Lyra said, shaking her head. “Not in a million years.”

“Right,” Lapis breathed, grinning. Unfortunately, this just puts everything back on the big what-if.

…Nah. The princesses are two steps down from goddesses, and besides, Equestria’s full of magic. Even if today solidly ruled out teleportation as an option of getting back to Earth, there’s got to be a way. If Gara Pinion and I both wound up here, then between the two of us, there has to be some way back.

Author's Note

Let this be a lesson to the lot of you: never make a promise about doing non-academic stuff immediately before Finals Week. :facehoof:

Yeah. Anyway, hey, everybody! This chapter isn't Christmas-themed, but it's almost twice as long as usual, so hopefully that makes up for it! A lot's happened in between uploads - my family now has cats, despite almost the whole lot of us being allergic to cats. They're brothers, they're still kittens, they're very cute, and if I knew how to upload pictures of them, I would.

Anyway, in theory, I should be uploading more consistently. And, in theory, I actually mean it this time. It occurred to me, though, the chapter before this one actually made a lot more sense for a first-book-ending-point than the Grand Galloping Gala did, so, uh... yeah, I don't really know where I was going with that one. If you want to break this story up into blocks in your head, that's where I'd draw the line, I guess?

I still plan on doing a Nightmare Night chapter and a Christmas chapter, by the way. They're just going to be not-in-real-time any more. Which sucks, but the only way I could change that is to wrap around until next year, and that'd just take too long. I've got a lot to write about happening in Ponyville, and I'm not gonna wait that long to write it!

Anyway, yeah. Props to you for making it through this ginormous chapter, Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays, and I'll see you in the next one!

9+9: Cider Pressure

It was officially fall in Ponyville. This, as it turns out, was a lot more intentional than Lapis Print had expected - Mayor Mare had made an announcement and everything. It seemed like every gust of chilly wind and every patch of iron-gray cloud was accompanied by a pegasus wearing a hat and a badge, and while Lapis was used to coming across the occasional Earth-pony who was busy talking to plants, he could swear he’d seen a tree’s leaves start going red during such a conversation.

The results of all these preparations, whether or not some of them were happening, was familiar enough. The foliage of Ponyville’s numerous trees was turning to every hue of fire (and also brown,) the morning grass was silvered with sparkling frost, and rains were frequent and cold enough that Lapis was beginning to regret leaving his rain-cloak in Twilight’s possession. He was not, however, regretful enough to reclaim the cloak - thanks to the schedule Lyra had provided, it was shockingly easy to plan for the weather.

What made things less easy, however, was the roofwork. It was still the same labor as usual, no more or less frequent on average - except now, all of the roofing requests were being delivered by the same pony, the one with the messy hoofwriting. And whoever they were, they seemed to think it was fine to deliver their requests in batches, so that Lapis would wake up some mornings to find his entire request board plastered with hastily-scribbled notes. Today had been one such day, and Lapis was more than relieved to be through with the day’s labor and in his basement.

This evening, though… this evening was special. Lapis had spent the time since the stampede using every spare moment he could get to perfect his latest work of artifice, and this evening was time for the first test. It looked a lot like an undersized, metal-edged pallet, thanks to the central wooden platform. There were, however, a few big differences - there was a pair of iron joysticks near one corner of the device, which were easily the most complicated part of the whole contraption. The joysticks would both extract mana from the telekinesis of any unicorn who grabbed them, and direct the flow of that mana into the eight aluminum-encased mana siphons set at regular intervals around the edges of the platform. The siphons, in turn, Lapis had salvaged from the wreckage of his mana compressor - although, after some design refinement and thrust-generation-to-mass testing, Lapis was beginning to think of the siphons as turbines, instead.

Lapis finished securing the last board in place, then took a deep breath before glancing over at his workbench. “I think it’s ready to test now. You ready?”

From atop Lapis’ workbench, Nikki looked up from the bowl of birdseed she’d been pecking at, then nodded. She kept a careful eye on the platform as Lapis stepped atop it, continuing to munch away at her meal as Lapis ignited his horn and took hold of the joystick. He felt the familiar draining sensation from his horn, and braced himself.

For a second, nothing happened. Two seconds, then three, then five.

Then, with a rattle that grew into a thrum, the turbines came to life. Warm, buttery-yellow light poured from the quartz crystals at their ends, and the platform wobbled, then began to rise off the ground. Lapis’ legs felt shaky, but he couldn’t tell whether this was from the magical exertion of running the platform, the turbines’ vibration carrying partway up into his legs, or simply from sheer astonishment at already being a foot - make that one and a half - above the basement floor.

Nikki continued to peck at her birdseed atop Lapis’ workbench, looking thoroughly unimpressed by his altitude. Lapis, meanwhile, pushed one of the joysticks to the left - and the platform immediately began to move to the right at a pace somewhere between flowing molasses and pond water. Okay. Controls are backwards, movement is painfully slow, but the platform seems to be basically steady so far, and it’s going to take a lot of work to drive into anything. Time to find out if the up-and-down works.

Lapis carefully began to push the other joystick forward, and the thrum of the platform’s turbines rose to a higher pitch as he began to float higher. To Lapis’ relief, he didn’t seem to be encountering any kind of deceleration curve, which meant that if the platform had a maximum altitude, it was quite a bit higher than he could test in his basement. Cool. I was worried I’d made a hovercraft instead of an actual flying platform, but it looks like I got it right on the money-

A dull spike of pain shot through Lapis’ skull as his horn collided with the ceiling, point-first. Lapis yelped, pulling his head down and releasing the joysticks from his telekinetic grip as he reached up to rub his horn with a hoof. Ow… damn, that’s even worse than stubbing your toe-

It was at this point that the turbines ran out of mana, and the platform dropped out from under Lapis’ hooves. Lapis barely had time to gasp as the wooden floor rushed up to meet him-

Lapis landed, his legs buckling beneath him, the force of the impact pressing an oof from his body. There was a sharp crunching noise, and Lapis froze, his eyes shooting wide open. Was that bone? Did I break something?

Nikki shot Lapis a concerned look as he carefully stood up and patted himself down. Lapis found no broken bones, and he took the opportunity to heave a sigh of relief, then started checking over the platform to see what had actually broken. He found the culprit shortly afterward - one of the quartz crystals he was using for a turbine had been broken, an especially rough, cloudy section crumbling away to reveal a small, clear, glassy-smooth facet beneath.

Great, Lapis thought, grimacing. Now I’ve got to recalibrate the joysticks.

Nikki gave a questioning coo as Lapis telekinetically gripped the joysticks, and Lapis waved a hoof in her general direction as the platform lifted off the ground a few seconds later. “I’m good, just, uh… Huh.”

The broken crystal was still working, mostly - the platform was now listing to one side, but in the opposite direction to the one Lapis had expected, so that the damaged crystal was higher off the ground. And the damaged crystal…

The coat of magic around Lapis’ horn was a simple, vaguely coffee-colored brown. For whatever reason, both flipping out or running his magic through quartz crystals caused the color of his magic to grow brighter and less saturated, turning it to a candlelight-colored sort of orangeish-yellow. The new facet on the quartz crystal, however, had added a new transformation - most of the magic now streaming from the crystal’s facet was coming out in trailing, Aurora-Borealis-like sheets of pure sulfur-yellow, but there were also ribbons of orange and an occasional thread of red.

Lapis glanced between the broken crystal and the tilted platform, his brow furrowing in confusion. “Well, whatever’s going on here, it looks like this guy is making more thrust than the rest of these, now,” he said, glancing over at Nikki, who had gone back to pecking at her birdseed. “I knew it took bigger crystals to handle more powerful spells, but maybe the cut or the clarity of the crystal determines how well it handles them? …No, that wouldn’t explain whatever prism-stuff this guy is doing. Weird.”

Nikki shrugged, then tossed the last sunflower seed from her bowl into the air, catching it in her beak as it fell back down. Lapis released the joysticks, waited for the turbines to cut off, then turned the platform upside-down and set it on the floor. A short while later, he’d popped the defective quartz crystal loose from its housing and set it on his workbench, resolving to investigate it later. Between the magical exertion of running the platform and the rest of the day’s labor, Lapis was just about ready to get some sleep.

“Bedtime,” Lapis yawned, and Nikki flapped over from the workbench, perching atop Lapis’ head as he headed up the stairs. He paused halfway up to grab Luna’s book, levitating it over to his side before continuing into the closet.

“So where were you, anyway?” Lapis asked, glancing up at Nikki as he stepped out of the closet and into his storefront. “I thought you might’ve flown south for the winter.”

Nikki smirked, rolling her eyes, then made a kind of circling gesture with her wing.

“You’ve been around?” Lapis guessed, cocking an eyebrow as Nikki nodded. “Should’ve figured you’d stay through the winter, honestly. I mean, I’ve got a whole warm house I’m letting you use, plus I provide birdseed-”

There was a knock at the door, and Lapis cut himself off, turning toward the door. “Huh. You think it’s a customer?”

Nikki shook her head, then took off, perching on the counter as Lapis walked over to the door and pulled it open. “Oh, hey, Bon Bon. What’s going on?”

“Tomorrow’s cider day,” Bon Bon said, a sharp grin splitting her face. “Lyra and I are camping out in line, and you’re doing it with us.”

Lapis shared a confused glance with Nikki, then looked back at Bon Bon, cocking an eyebrow. “I am?”

“Oh, yes you are,” Bon Bon said, nodding firmly. “You’ve never had a Ponyville cider day before, it’s as much a Ponyville tradition as Hearth’s Warming Eve. -Although, Pinkie Pie does think it was all her idea, as of this year.”

Lapis blinked. “Sorry, what?”

“Oh, yeah,” Bon Bon said, waving her hoof. “So, I heard this from a mutual acquaintance, but apparently, it only occurred to Pinkie this afternoon that she could try getting ready for cider season a whole day in advance. The rest of town’s been doing it for as long as I’ve been here, but I guess that either nopony ever mentioned that to Pinkie, or else she never noticed.”

Lapis shrugged. “Could be either. …Might be both, actually.”

“Anyway, Lyra’s already getting the tent set up,” Bon Bon said. “You just grab a pillow and a spare blanket or two, and we’ll be off. …You do have spare blankets, right?”

“Uh,” Lapis said. “Do the ones on my guest bed count?”

Bon Bon paused, then shrugged. “Alright, I guess we’re stopping at a general store first. C’mon, grab your pillow and we’ll go.”

“…Alrighty then,” Lapis said, setting Luna’s book on the counter and igniting his horn.

Bon Bon glanced at the book as Lapis’ pillow levitated itself from down the hall. “Have you written to her yet?”

“Well, she writes to me, mostly,” Lapis said. “Nikki, you coming with?”

Nikki nodded, then took off from the counter, landing atop Lapis’ head as he pulled the door shut behind himself and started down the road with Bon Bon. To Lapis’ surprise, it seemed like he and Bon Bon weren’t the only ponies with plans to camp outside Sweet Apple Acres - it was nearly sunset, and the rosy evening light was already dim enough that most ponies weren’t out on the streets, but those who were all seemed to be bearing either bundles of cloth or large wooden poles across their backs.

“So, what did you-know-who write to you about?” Bon Bon asked, looking around at the other ponies.

Lapis shrugged. “Little chunks of research, mostly. Nothing about a way back home, but she was recently able to tell me a little bit about Gara Pinion. Gara was a griffon, first off, and she was kind of a busy… uh, bird. What she did over in Griffonstone, we don’t know, but she wound up handling a lot of ancient Equestria’s logistical stuff - what trade shipments went through which towns or arrived at which ports, what organizations were in charge of which goods-”

“I know what logistics are,” Bon Bon quickly cut in. “Have you talked to her about your academic prospects?”

Oh. “Uh, not so much, no,” Lapis said.

“Really?” Bon Bon asked, shooting Lapis a flat look.

“Yeah, I was kind of expecting her to bring it up at some point, but so far, she hasn’t,” Lapis said, shrugging as he walked. “Honestly, I’m not sure she knows.”

“Right,” Bon Bon muttered.

It was at this point that Bon Bon’s face adopted an imposing, almost official-looking half-scowl that Lapis found very familiar. It combined an unblinking stare, a very particular concentration of drooping around her lower eyelids, and a sharp downward angle at one corner of her mouth. It was the half-scowl of a pony who had stayed awake all though a night that was six hours longer than usual, helped to calm an entire panicking town through the duration, and then concluded the evening by fighting a demon from myth and legend.

In other words, it was clear to Lapis that Bon Bon was very nearly done with this shit, and that the next problem to exist in her vicinity would very likely get tackled to the ground. And, somehow, Lapis had a sneaking suspicion that he was somewhere in the queue.

Lapis glanced up at Nikki, then turned to look at Bon Bon. “Listen, I know that it’s a big deal. I get it, I promise.”

“She offered,” Bon Bon enunciated, “to fund, your education. And pay off your loan. She did. The big one! Her! ‘Big deal’ is kind of an understatement!”

“Exactly,” Lapis said, as they stopped walking. “It’s not just a big deal, it’s huge. Like, change-my-life-forever huge. Lyra walked me through the implications already. I have an idea of what I stand to gain here, and I’m really not sure what I might have to give in exchange.”

Bon Bon sighed, rubbing her forehead with a hoof. “Lapis, please just think about this for a second. She collects all the taxes in Equestria. Even with the funding that goes toward infrastructure, defense, the economy, whatever else, she has more bits than she knows what to do with - You’re like a thirsty ant to her! All you need is a drop of water, and she has a whole kitchen sink. On top of that, you’re already in touch with her sister, so giving over those few thousand bits is basically common courtesy.”

“Then why offer it to me as a scholarship?” Lapis asked, raising a hoof.

Bon Bon sighed, then gave Lapis a flat look. “Lapis, you invent stuff in your spare time. Not only that, you write down how you did it. That makes you a more productive member of Equestrian society than… oh, just about everypony else I know. You’re about two steps away from reshaping the lives of everypony in Equestria, and all you need is a little financial push. To Her Highness, you’re an investment, and I’d say you’ve got a pretty high payoff-”

“Bon Bon, what happened the last time someone saw me as an investment?” Lapis asked.

Bon Bon opened her mouth - then, slowly, she closed it, the look of annoyance sliding away to reveal a wide-eyed grimace of faintly-embarrassed realization.

“Oh,” Bon Bon said. “Oh, boy.”

“Yeah,” Lapis said, lowering his voice. “Bon Bon, I’m trying to think about this reasonably. I’ve done the mental math, and all my reason says that there’s nothing to worry about. But I trusted my reasoning with my loan, too, and look where that got me. Plus, thanks to the whole prophecy thing, it’s not just me or my family I’m worried about! The entire future is at stake - that’s millions of ponies, maybe more, who might live in utopia or a nightmare or - hell, maybe never even be born at all, depending on what I do. I am terrified, Bon Bon. I don’t make good decisions when I’m terrified, and I really, really can’t afford to fuck up here. Can we please not have this talk until I’ve calmed down a little?”

Bon Bon hesitated, then sighed, her ears cocking back. “Alright, we can do that. …You still haven’t explained what ‘fuck’ means, by the way.”

Lapis blinked, then grinned, shaking his head. “Trust me, it’s not the kind of thing you explain in public. …But thanks, Bon Bon.”

Bon Bon smirked, rolling her eyes. “Don’t mention it.”

Around fifteen minutes later, they arrived outside Sweet Apple Acres. Lapis had followed the example of the other ponies, draping his new blanket and his pillow over his back. The line was already enormous, continuing around the Apple family property and out of sight for as far as Lapis could see. Despite the enormous size of the line of tents, spotting Lyra was easy - she was standing in front of an enormous, rumpled pile of dark green cloth, frantically trying to prop it upright against itself using her horn and hooves.

“How’s the tent coming?” Bon Bon asked, as they walked over. “Need a hoof?”

“Nah,” Lyra said, turning to look at them just as the tent collapsed. “I’ve totally been camping before, I know how to make a tent work- Oh, hey, Lapis, Nikki! Glad you’re here!”

“Yeah, Bon Bon wouldn’t let me miss out,” Lapis said, looking at the pile of rough green fabric behind Lyra. “…Uh, aren’t the stakes supposed to go outside the tent?”

“Ooh,” Lyra said, her eyes widening. “-I mean, uh, yeah! I knew that! I just… figured it might be easier to get them in once the rest of the tent was standing up already.”

Lapis tried to suppress a grin. “Maybe, yeah. Alright, I’ll hold the poles up on this side, you take the other, and Bon Bon can take care of the stakes…”

And, within around thirty seconds, the pile of rough green cloth had resolved itself into a large and slightly crooked tent. Bon Bon had managed to bury each stake in the ground with a single stomp each, and Lapis had been busy enough surreptitiously holding Lyra’s side upright that he’d forgotten to pay attention to his own. Still, the tent managed to appear both warm and spacious, which Lapis expected he’d appreciate very shortly - the sun had nearly set now, and the evening temperature had progressed from crisp, through bracing, and all the way to downright chilly.

“Better start the fire quick,” Bon Bon noted, and Lapis turned away from the violet, darkening sunset just in time to watch her pull her head away from a tripod of firewood. “Lapis, you know how to start a fire?”

“Not without equipment,” Lapis said. “Lyra?”

“I’ve got it,” Lyra said, shutting her eyes and igniting her horn. A few seconds later, a small, candle-sized flame burst into existence atop one of the logs, working its way down a strip of bark for around five seconds before fading away.

“Oh, huh,” Lyra said, her brow furrowing. “That’s harder than it looks. Um…”

“Yeah, we’ll need some tinder and kindling first,” Lapis said. “Smaller stuff, so the fire can work its way up to catching the bigger logs,” he added, as Lyra shot him a bewildered look.

“Oh,” Lyra said, nodding. “Right, yeah. Hang on, I’ll go find some smaller sticks!”

“Make sure they’re dry, they won’t catch if they’re wet!” Lapis called, as Lyra trotted into the nearby woods.

Bon Bon watched her go, then grinned over at Lapis. “She’s never actually camped before. We usually just show up early in the morning, I’ve been trying to get her to do this for years.”

Lapis shook his head as he tore a hank of dry grass up from a nearby fence post. “Seems like a lot of trouble for cider.”

“Hey,” Bon Bon said, pointing an accusing hoof at Lapis. “This isn’t just cider, this is Apple family cider. It’s worth it.”

Lapis remembered Big Mac’s barrel of get-well-soon cider, and found himself nodding. “…Yeah. Honestly, it is. Hey, you think Big Mac thinks I’m mad at him?”

Bon Bon shrugged. “For shoulder-checking you, for trying to set you up with Applejack at brunch? I don’t know. Are you?”

“For trying to what?” Lapis asked, pausing mid-way through stuffing the dry grass beneath the firewood.

“Oh,” Bon Bon said. “Yeah, Lyra thinks he was trying to set you up with Applejack.”

A cold tingle of dread ran up the back of Lapis’ spine, but he forced it down before it could develop any further. “…Well, I’d prefer if he hadn’t done that, but I’m definitely not... angry about it.”

Bon Bon smirked. “You like her.”

The tingle of ran up Lapis’ spine again, and this time he wasn’t able to suppress a shiver of disgust. “No, I really don’t.”

Bon Bon’s smirk turned to a frown, her brow furrowing. “You think she’s ugly?”

“What?” Lapis said, drawing himself upright. “No! I just… it’s complicated,” he trailed off, noticing that a few of the other campers in line were looking in their direction.

“Complicated,” Bon Bon said, giving Lapis a flat look. “My. What a novel word.”

Lapis grimaced, looking to either side, then leaned forward. “Prophecy,” he muttered.

Bon Bon’s eyes widened a little, and she nodded slowly, a smug grin spreading across her face. “Oh. Right, so you don’t want to get involved… but you do like her.”

“Like who?” Lyra asked, trotting back over with a bundle of twigs floating by her side. “Ooh, is it Applejack?”

“No!” Lapis said, his ears flopping back as he turned to stare at Lyra.

“Yes,” Bon Bon said, smirking over Lapis’ shoulder. “But he can’t, because the entire future is at stake, and he definitely isn't nervous at all.”

Lyra’s ears fell halfway back, and a wide, warm smile stretched across her face. “Aww…”

Lapis groaned, facehoofing. “That’s not it, really, it’s… Can we not? Please?”

“Well, I can wait until after we’ve got this fire started,” Lyra said, shrugging. “But we’re probably picking this up afterward.”

“I’ll get the s’more stuff,” Bon Bon said, turning back toward the tent. “Lapis, you help her with the fire.”

“Right,” Lapis sighed. If I grab the firewood and run into the orchard, I’ll… look ridiculous, and make it ten feet before Bon Bon gets me. “Okay, so we want this dry grass close to the middle, and the little sticks all around it…”

Every year, on the nights of Cider Season, there were three ponies who were tied for Busiest Pony of the Day: Applejack, Big Macintosh, and Granny Smith. To an uninformed onlooker, Apple Bloom might look like a promising contender - but, to somepony a touch more informed (like Applejack), it was plain that Apple Bloom was really just good at looking busy when in reality she wasn’t even in the running.

Another uninformed onlooker might notice the slow pace at which Granny Smith handled her share of the labor, how long it took her to totter her way down the rows of bushels full of glistening apples, inspecting each in turn with a rheumy eye, and think that it was a straight tie between Applejack and Big Mac - but, again, Applejack knew better. For Granny Smith, this much effort was near to a marathon for a younger pony, but she kept chugging right along anyhow. (Honestly, Applejack was near certain that Granny Smith was the winner of the tie, but the competition wasn’t really formal enough to call for any debate - and besides, Granny Smith would raise Tartarus about how it wasn’t any trouble at all.)

Big Mac, as always, was busy fixing up the press, going over every last part and giving each in turn a firm knock with his hoof, just to make sure that everything that should hold still was holding still before he began pulling the whole contraption over toward the cider stand. Apple Bloom was sticking close to Granny Smith, who was generously pretending that Apple Bloom was trying to help with quality control, and so was busy explaining how to tell the difference between a good apple and a bad one. Apple Bloom, just as generously, was doing her best to listen, but the way she kept glancing in Applejack’s direction suggested that she meant more to look busy enough to sidestep any of the real labor.

And as for Applejack… well, it likely wouldn’t be fair if she were to judge her own labor. She felt tired, though, what with all the trucking the obvious bad apples onto the wagon one big-ol’ bushel at a time, all the way down the length of the barn through to the door, outside of which sat the wagon that she and Big Mac would later use to haul the bad apples to the compost pit. Applejack’s shoulders and thighs felt so convinced they were burning that she half-expected to smell smoke, and she had to muffle a yawn as she approached Granny Smith for the umpteen-hundredth time that evening.

“This whole bushel is kaput,” Granny Smith croaked, poking at one of the barrels with a hoof as Applejack approached. “Worms got in ‘em.”

Applejack winced. “Aw, shoot. Ah thought Ah’d kept all the worms out this year.”

Granny Smith snorted, then chuckled as Applejack picked up the bushel and slung it around onto her back. “Well, it’ll be a long way yet, but Ah s’pect you’ll manage it someday.”

Applejack cocked an eyebrow, then chuckled herself. “Ah sure hope so. It’ll make this all a lot easier.”

“E-yup,” Big Mac said, as Applejack turned and started back toward the wagon. Her hoof caught on the edge of a floorboard, and she briefly stumbled before catching herself.

“Well, shoot, that could’a been bad,” she muttered, stomping the board down with a back hoof as she made the journey back to the wagon again. Applejack remembered carrying the bushels like this when she’d been a little younger than Apple Bloom - back then, Applejack had tripped a lot. More than that, she hadn’t figured out how to carry the bushels right, and they’d chafed so much would she’d thought they would wear ruts into her bones. They hadn’t, at least not yet. Maybe her hide had gotten tougher, or maybe she’d gotten big enough for the bushel’s weight to spread out a little. Or maybe Ah just learned.

As always, the walk back from the wagon went by quicker than the walk toward it. Applejack arrived back beside Granny Smith after what felt like only a second or two, only to find that the elder Apple was inspecting her instead of a bushel.

“You ain’t been pushin’ yerself again, have you?” Granny Smith asked, narrowing her eyes in suspicion. “It’s too busy tomorrow for you to pull that.”

“No, Granny Smith,” Applejack said. “Ah just tripped on a floorboard on my way over.”

“Mm. Maybe you’d better get some rest anyhow,” Granny Smith said. “We’re near done already, Ah’m sure Apple Bloom can manage the rest herself.”

Applejack blinked, then looked over to Apple Bloom, who looked back with about as much doubt as Applejack was feeling. They turned back toward Granny Smith at around the same time.

“Are you sure?” they asked.

“Yes, Ah’m sure,” Granny Smith said, waving a hoof and speaking only to Applejack. “She ain’t got much to do tomorrow, just workin’ the tap. You’ll need yer rest, Applejack - Apple Bloom can afford to get a little tuckered out.”

“If you say so, Granny Smith” Applejack said, and Apple Bloom grimaced as Applejack turned toward the barn door one more time. “Ah’ll go and make a round of the property, make sure nopony’s set up campfires too close to the fences, and then Ah suppose Ah’d best hit the hay. Good luck, Apple Bloom - and, uh, it helps if you try to keep the bushels from rocking on your back.”

“Uh-huh,” Apple Bloom said, scowling. Applejack trotted out the barn door, rolling her eyes and grinning, then started down the hill toward the fences. She’d best start by the back gate, then work her way around to the front.

Unfortunately for Lapis' hopes of changing the subject, most of the sticks that Lyra had grabbed were dry - or, well, not most of them, but enough of them to dry out the rest. One of the larger logs was already beginning to blacken as Bon Bon re-emerged from the tent with a picnic basket.

“So, how’s the candy shop doing?” Lapis asked, looking to Bon Bon. “Cinnamon drops selling?”

“Like hotcakes,” Bon Bon replied, once she’d set down the basket. “Lapis?”

“Yeah?”

“You’re not getting out of this.”

Lapis groaned. “It’s really not that big of a deal.”

Lyra winced, then shrugged. “Well… I mean, right now, your closest companion is kind of a pigeon. No offense to you, Nikki, you’re a great friend,” Lyra hastily added, upon noticing Nikki glaring at her from atop the tent. “But I really think it could do you some good if somepony were around to help take your mind off… stuff.”

“That’s the exact opposite of what I need!” Lapis said, raising a hoof as Nikki rolled her eyes and flew off into the orchard, cuffing Lyra’s ear as she went. “Ignoring my problems doesn’t make them go away - honestly, it tends to make them worse!”

Lyra and Bon Bon exchanged a look.

Then, Bon Bon reached into the picnic basket and produced a sack of marshmallows. Lyra, meanwhile, went straight for the throat. “Okay, so. How long have you been interested?”

“I never have been,” Lapis insisted. I could just tell some of the truth, here. I just really don’t know if it’ll be worth it, or if I’ll only wind up delaying the inevitable. Or sounding like a weirdo, though it’s a bit late for that.

“Right, sure,” Lyra said, nodding. “…But let’s say, y’know, just hypothetically, that you were.”

Okay, weirdo time it is. Lapis sighed, then leaned forward, keeping his voice low. “Alright, you know what? What if, hypothetically, I wasn’t interested in ponies at all?”

Lyra blinked, then sat back in her seat and giggled for a second - then, when she opened her eyes and saw Lapis’ face, she trailed off. “Wait, you’re serious?”

Bon Bon, cocked an eyebrow, and Lapis continued. “A hundred percent serious. And yeah, I know it’s not normal, or… whatever else, but it’s the way I work, and I don’t think I can change it. I just… if I ever think about getting intimate with a pony, any pony, I can’t think about it as anything but gross. The same way that you, or Bon Bon, might not be interested in getting it on with stallions. It just doesn’t click.”

“Huh,” Bon Bon said, nodding. Her eyebrow remained firmly cocked.

Lyra sat back, staring down into the campfire, her ears twitching atop her head. “…So, not mares, not stallions… nopony at all?”

“Nope,” Lapis said, shaking his head. “For what it’s worth, I really don’t think it’s affected my life in any other way. I don’t feel broken, or hollow, or anything else because of it. I’m still me, and not being interested is just… part of me.”

“Huh,” Bon Bon repeated. And then, to Lapis’ horror, an ominous smirk began to grow upon her face. “You know… I think I understand now.”

“…You sure?” Lapis asked.

Bon Bon nodded, her smirk now shifting out of ‘ominous’ and firmly into ‘smug.’ “Oh, I think I do. You said there weren’t many ponies in A-mare-ica?”

“I did,” Lapis said, another tingle of dread beginning to build in his gut.

“And you were raised by griffons. I’m guessing there’s a lot of griffons there?”

“Uh, yeah,” Lapis said. …Wait.

Bon Bon nodded, spearing a marshmallow and extending it confidently over the campfire. “Well, then I think I’ve wrapped my head around the whole thing…”

She stared directly at Lapis, the smirk replaced by a grin that was almost perfectly polite. “Griffon colt.”

“Ooooh,” Lyra said, slowly nodding, a look of comprehension spreading across her face like the morning sunrise. “Oh, so that’s why you let that Gilda griffon stay at your house!”

Lapis groaned, facehoofing. “No, that’s not… Nope. No, I am done with this conversation. Next topic, moving on. Pass me a marshmallow?”

“On it,” Lyra chirped, levitating the sack of marshmallows up from beside Bon Bon. She levitated one out of the bag for herself, then passed the rest to Lapis, who wasted no time spearing one on a stick and getting it over the fire.

“Alright, so I should be ready for that trip into the Everfree pretty soon,” Lapis said, as he carefully lowered his marshmallow into position over the fire. …Honestly, I could probably get away with not using the stick. It just wouldn’t feel right, though.

“Is that so,” Bon Bon said, cocking an eyebrow. “I’m guessing that means you’ve cooked up another gizmo.”

“Uh-oh,” Lyra said, her eyes briefly widening. “…Uh, I mean, good for you!”

“It’s just a floating platform this time,” Lapis said, waving a hoof. “I stand on it, I move the controls, I float myself up in front of the bookshelf. Worst-case scenario, I run out of magic, and I… take a tumble. That’s it.”

“That’s, um…” Lyra hesitated, glancing back and forth between Lapis and the campfire. “That’s kind of a pretty bad worst-case scenario. How much of a tumble are we talking, here?”

“I won’t be in there alone,” Lapis assured her. “I’ll have either Zecora, or… somepony else right there with me the whole time. Besides, I’ll be sure to get myself down safely long before I run out of magic.”

“Okay, let’s back up a little,” Bon Bon said, raising a hoof. “Did you say ‘floating platform?’ Are we talking something like… I don’t know, a scooter, except it can fly?”

“Float, not fly,” Lapis corrected. “And it’s really, really slow, not to mention a pain in the horn to steer, so don’t worry, unicorns aren’t about to replace pegasi anytime soon.”

“Okay,” Bon Bon said, rubbing her forehead with a hoof. “But this platform thing. It’ll get you off the ground? Like, all the way off the ground, no wings required?”

“It did in my basement,” Lapis said, shrugging. “So that’s at least six feet up, and I’m confident it should be able to go a fair bit higher. But, again, not a replacement for wings. I’m not inventing anypony out of a job with this, unless they were already invented out of a job by ladders.”

“Right,” Bon Bon sighed. “Sure. Just do me a favor, okay?”

“Sure thing,” Lapis said, frowning.

“Great,” Bon Bon began, looking Lapis right in the eyes. “There’s a spell out there somewhere, it’s called a Bounce-Bubble Shield. It only takes a second or so to cast, and once you do, it’ll conjure a big, cushy bubble around you, so that you won’t break your neck when you hit the ground.”

“…You want me to learn it?” Lapis asked, cocking an eyebrow. “Sure thing, I was honestly thinking along the same lines-”

“Not just that,” Bon Bon said, shaking her head without breaking eye contact. “No, what I want you to do is promise me not to set one hoof on that platform until after you can cast that spell in less than two seconds.”

“Uh, sure,” Lapis said, frowning. “I promise not to do that, until after I’ve done the other thing.”

“Not good enough,” Bon Bon said, her stare tightening into a glare. “Lapis, you haven’t seen what falling does to ponies. I have. I need you to Pinkie Pr-mmf!”

And suddenly, Lyra’s hooves were clamped over Bon Bon’s mouth. Bon Bon paused, scowling at Lyra for a fraction of a second, then her eyes widened, her ears flopping back as she realized what she’d ask Lapis to hang over his own head.

“She didn’t mean it,” Lyra said, a vaguely frantic expression on her face as she pulled her hooves off Bon Bon’s mouth.

“I didn’t,” Bon Bon said, shaking her head. “Not like that. It was habit, I’m sorry, I…”

Lapis looked at the fire, and realized he’d dropped his marshmallow into it. “No,” he said, and the word felt… thick, in his mouth. Heavy. When had he stood up?

“I get it,” he continued. “I do. I’ve… seen someone… I get it.” Lapis’ heart began speeding up in his chest, and he turned to Lyra. “How do you Pinkie Promise?”

“…What?” Lyra asked.

“Pinkie Promising,” Lapis said, continuing to ignore his heart battering itself against his ribcage. “How do I do it? Do I need to sacrifice a cookie or something? Light birthday candles, sprinkle confetti?”

“No, no,” Lyra said, her eyes wide. “You- you just, um, make the gestures and say the words. ‘Cross my heart and hope to fly, stick a cupcake in my eye.’ But Lapis, you and Pinkie-”

“This isn’t about Pinkie,” Lapis said, and he turned to face Bon Bon. “This is about two ponies. Someone I knew, someone she knew.”

Lapis took a slow, deep breath, then opened his eyes and held Bon Bon’s gaze. Her eyes were wide, startled, and there was a tide of emotions behind them to mirror his own. Grief and recognition and guilt, not sorrow alone but the nagging whisper that there was some measure they could’ve taken, some decision they could’ve made, something, anything that they could’ve done to-

“Bon Bon, I promise I won’t make you go through that again,” Lapis said. “Cross my heart and hope to fly, stick a cupcake in my eye.”

He knew, in some disconnected part of his mind, that the words he was speaking and the things they meant were absurdly distant from what he was trying to say, and he could only hope he would be understood. He wondered whether that wasn’t always the case.

Slowly, Bon Bon nodded. It was likely just Lapis’ imagination, but as he sat down, he thought he smelled cotton candy. He stared into the fire, watching his marshmallow curl into a charred, shriveled husk.

Lyra looked on, bewildered, as Bon Bon stood up, picking up her own marshmallow stick with a hoof and walking around the perimeter of the campfire.

Bon Bon offered Lapis the stick, her golden-brown marshmallow steaming atop it. “His name was Gumball,” she said, so quietly that Lapis almost didn’t hear her over the crackling of the fire.

“Hers was Amanda,” Lapis replied.

He reached out and took the stick. Bon Bon sat beside him, and Lyra walked over and sat between them shortly afterward. From the half-tilt of her ears, she was still a little confused, but she wrapped both of them in a hug regardless.

The sun was completely gone over the horizon now, and there was only a faint violet glow to obscure the twinkling stars. It was still cold, and the leaves were still rustling in the trees, but the wind had fallen still enough that the smoke of the campfire rose straight up for once, instead of aiming itself directly for Lapis’ face as it usually would. The heat of the fire soaked into Lapis’ chest and legs, baking his face, and yet all its heat and all the autumn chill mattered so much less than the warmth of the other two ponies sitting on the edge of the firelight.

A moment of silence followed.

“…Well,” Lapis eventually said. “Gotta say, I was not expecting that to go the direction it did.”

Bon Bon snorted before he’d finished his sentence. “Yeah, no kidding. Sorry, Cider Day doesn’t normally turn out like this.”

“Well, I don’t know,” Lyra said, shrugging. “It kinda does bring out the worst in some ponies. Remember the year that Spoiled Rich only got half a mug of cider?”

Bon Bon winced. “Remember? Lyra, I’m pretty sure my ears are still ringing.”

“Spoiled Rich?” Lapis asked, cocking his head. “Wait, are we talking about Filthy Rich’s wife?”

“That’s the one,” Bon Bon said, scowling. “Meanest mare in Ponyville, with the money to buy most of her problems away. And Celestia forbid you get between Diamond Tiara, her little filly, and something she wants.”

Lapis grimaced. “Oh. Yeah, I know the type. …Actually, we’ve even got a word for folks like her, back in A-mare-ica.”

“You do?” Lyra asked, raising her eyebrows.

Lapis nodded. “‘Karen.’ It means ‘she who asks to see the manager.’”

“She tried that on me once,” Bon Bon said, smirking. “I am the manager.”

“Yeah, you are,” Lyra giggled, then she paused, turning to meet Lapis’ gaze. “…Hey, Lapis?”

“What’s up?” Lapis asked, cocking a confused eyebrow.

“Could you maybe tell us about the platform… lift… thing you made?” Lyra asked. “Like, talk us through the design, tell us how you’re going to make it, y’know, safe? Please?”

Lapis hesitated, then nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, I can do that.” He cleared his throat, then levitated the picnic basket over to his side, pulling out a marshmallow for Bon Bon. “Alright. So, first off, it’s a rectangle…”

Even going out the back gate, it didn’t take long at all for Applejack to find the back-end of the tent line. To her dismay, next to nopony seemed to have enough healthy respect for fire safety, leaving Applejack to start working her way up the line one tent at a time, lecturing each group of ponies in turn until they’d doused their fires and stamped out the coals.

By the time she’d worked her way halfway through the line, it was dark, most ponies in line were inside their tents, and Applejack was beginning to wonder if she would’ve had an easier time of things back in the barn. She’d already seen a lot of familiar faces, but one trio in particular gave her cause to pause.

Lyra Heartstrings, Lapis Print, and Bon Bon, Applejack thought, as she kept trotting along the side of the fence. Their fire was already a safe enough distance from anything that might catch, but she turned toward their fire as she recognized them anyway. Glad to see that Lapis feller’s settling in a little, between that whole brunch mess and… well, earlier, Ah was half-convinced he wouldn’t be here-

As Applejack approached Lapis and Bon Bon from behind, Lyra spotted her. She paused, checking to see whether the other two ponies were looking, then made eye contact with Applejack and frantically shook her head ‘no,’ waving her hooves back and forth.

Applejack slowed to a stop, looking over at the other two ponies, neither of which had noticed Lyra’s behavior. “…it’s all drawn in through the joysticks,” Lapis was saying, “so all you’ve got to do to power the thing is hold on. If you let go, though, you get about three or four seconds before you just drop.”

“Well, fix that, first of all,” Bon Bon said.

“Yep, that’s probably smart,” Lapis agreed. “I’m thinking if I add in a secondary mana feed, one with a bigger delay, a larger capacity, and less throughput, that should translate to letting me down quite a bit slower than terminal velocity…”

Not right now, Lyra mouthed, still staring at Applejack.

Applejack hesitated, then nodded. Lyra shot Applejack an awkward grin, then turned back toward the other two ponies as Applejack turned and trotted off.

Applejack didn’t really know Lyra too well. But, contrary to what a few more solitary ponies might say, the magic of Harmony in Equestria had quite a few mundane components, some of which occasionally called for cooperation between complete strangers. When you noticed somepony teaching their foal or filly how to cross a street, for example, it didn’t matter whether you’d usually stop and look both ways, because you made darn sure to set the example either way. Likewise, when two ponies were arguing, you either tuned them out or you didn’t make it obvious you were listening, and if somepony in a crowd suggested that now wasn’t the best time to join in, you took the hint and thanked them for the warning, later. You couldn’t always manage it, of course, and there were a few ponies who didn’t even try, but the rest of the time, the rest of Equestria made it work.

Still, Ah’d nearly think that was Twilight talking back there, what with how much jargon he was jabberin’, Applejack thought. Didn’t Applebloom say somethin’ about Lapis makin’ a big metal wheel? Guess he’s got some engineering expertise-

Huh. Well, you don’t see that every day.

As Applejack continued trotting along the side of the fence, she paused momentarily to stare up at one of the branches that hung outside the Apple family property. Perched atop it was a brown, barrel-shaped sort of owl, and sitting beside the owl was what looked a normal pigeon. They nearly seemed to be talking to each other - or, at least, the pigeon was cooing at the owl and gesturing with its wings, and the owl was sitting still and listening. As Applejack watched, the owl turned its head all the way around backwards to look at her.

“Right,” Applejack mumbled. “Ah forgot y’all could do that.”

“Who?” the owl said.

“Oh. Uh, you all. Y’know, owls?” Applejack said, rubbing the back of her neck with a hoof. “The whole turnin’-your-head-backwards thing.”

“Who?” the owl said again.

“Uh, yours,” Applejack said, cocking an eyebrow. It was at this point Applejack noticed that the pigeon was giving her a look, the kind of look that asked whether Applejack shouldn’t be someplace else right about now.

“Right, well,” Applejack said. “Sorry for interruptin’ you, Ah’ll just be on my way.”

“Who?”

“Me,” Applejack said, then she chuckled. “Oh, never mind.”

With that, she turned and trotted onward, leaving the owl and the pigeon to their apparent conversation.

“…What I’m trying to ask, here,” Nikki continued, once Applejack had left, “is where in the rotten oats my warning was. I gave you one job-"

“Who?” said the owl.

Nikki gave him a flat look. “Don’t patronize me.”

The owl didn’t smile - owls rarely did - but the rings of darker feathers around his eyes shifted into a position that implied a smirk. “My apologies, I couldn’t resist. Twilight has provided me with the night shift.”

Nikki groaned. “Okay, clearly you's forgetting who employs 'who,' here. So. Who provides you with the better lodgings? Disaster Pony number three, or me?”

“Twilight,” the owl said, his facial expression now even and perfectly unreadable.

“You mean that,” Nikki asked. “Alright. Sure. What's she got that I don't, huh?”

“A warm house she's willing to share,” the owl said. “Have you considered that might be all it takes?”

Nikki sighed, rubbing the bridge of her beak with her wing. “You're killin' me, Hoots. Listen, I'm workin' on it, alright? The guy's shingles are made of fluffing metal. You ever tried to peck through metal shingles? Because Tippy Taps the woodpecker did, and he's with Fluttershy now.

The owl shrugged with one wing. “Perhaps you could simply ask Fluttershy to translate for you, and request that this pony build a birdhouse into his own attic?”

Nikki blinked, then huffed, leaning forward. “Look, he and the walkin' problems don't get on so good. I bring the wrong pony to his door, I could wind up outside of it. I'm not gonna, but I could.”

“Ah. Well, at least you've given me the courtesy of explaining as an equal,” the owl noted, and Nikki wondered whether he was smirking. “In truth, I was asleep when it all began. Had I been awake, I would have raised the alarm right away. Have you considered assigning me a diurnal co-worker?”

Nikki shook her head. “Only desperate enough guy I got is Fennel's brother-in-law, and no offense, but I ain't gonna put a rat in the same tree as an owl. 'Sides, Fennel's got a good heart, it'd look bad if I made him worry.”

“Oh, of course,” the owl said. “And no offense taken. Very well. I'll continue to alert your contacts if I see anything that might end badly.”

“Thanks, Hoots,” Nikki said. "I spot a new co-worker or a nice lady owl, I'll point 'em right to ya."

“Many thanks. Always happy to help,” the owl said, and a few seconds later, he took flight and vanished into the starry sky.

“…Who are all these ponies?!” exclaimed a scratchy, familiar voice.

Nope, Lapis thought. Not awake yet. Not my problem-

“Isn’t this GREAT?!”

Shit! Pinkie! Lapis sucked in a gasp and sat bolt-upright inside the tent, his eyes snapping wide open as the front of his blanket fell off his body.

“Whuh?” Lyra asked, blinking her eyes open from the other side of the tent as Pinkie Pie began rambling full-speed from somewhere nearby. “Oh. Uh, morning, Lapis…”

“Morning,” Lapis said, taking a deep breath and laying back down. “Well, that was a rush. I thought I’d need to make a coffee run after I woke up, but yeah, not anymore.”

“Yes you will,” Bon Bon mumbled, from somewhere inside the pile of blankets that also contained Lyra. “Headache. Quiet down, I’m trying to sleep.”

Lapis felt his cheeks growing warm. “My bad,” he muttered, and he tried to shut his eyes and go back to sleep.

Unfortunately, judging by the growl of frustration from Rainbow Dash, sleep was off the table. “Are you kidding me?! I wake up before the sunrise twice a year! I go through all the trouble of making sure it happens today, and… Ugh.”

“What’s the matter, Rainbow Dash?” Pinkie asked. “Ooh! Ooh! Is it the morning grumps? Because my gramps always had the grumps in the morning, and I know just how to fix that!”

“Um, well,” a third voice mumbled, and Lapis frowned as he pulled his blanket back up to his chin. Fluttershy’s here too?

“Is that seriously a rock?” Rainbow Dash asked.

“Mm-hm! Calcite!” Pinkie chirped. “I always gave granite to my grumpy Gramps, and that granite got Gramps’ grumps gone by breakfast! But, y’know, Gramps was a granite farmer, and you deal more with clouds, Rainbow Dash, so I thought I’d go with calcite instead, since it looks a bit like clouds!”

“…Pinkie Pie, you are so weird,” Rainbow Dash said.

“When weird works, weird works wonders!” Pinkie replied. “Ooh, Fluttershy! Um, are you still up for that thing with the birdies?”

“Well, yes,” Fluttershy mumbled. “It’s just that, um, I don’t think you’ve told me when that is.”

“Oh, right,” Pinkie said. “Let’s see… When works for you?”

“Well, if you want to practice with a whole flock of songbirds,” Fluttershy began, “then, um, it’s probably best to wait until they’re not busy nesting for the winter. So, I would wait until springtime.”

“Oh, alrighty then,” Pinkie said. “Let’s shoot for, mmm… mid-March-ish.”

A second of silence followed.

“And?” Rainbow Dash demanded.

Lapis frowned again, turning to squint at the wall of the tent. What’s going on out there?

“Oh, yes,” Fluttershy said. “Um, Pinkie Pie. I’m very sorry, but… I’ll need to know why you want to teach a flock of birds to blow party horns, first.”

“Oh, right,” Pinkie said, giggling. “Well, I got the idea from your choir for the Princess. I realized how nice it was that the birds could sing along with the royal fanfare, and then I thought - ‘oh my gosh! What if, they did that for all the events?’”

“Well, um, they only said they would do it for Princess Celestia,” Fluttershy mumbled. “I never asked them whether it was something they would want to do for everypony. And, um, I really don’t know whether they’d be alright with party horns.”

“Yeah, you can only carry so much while you’re flying,” Rainbow Dash said. “And I can deal with a whole bunch, but birds are way smaller. They might not be able to handle a whole party horn apiece.”

“Oh, that’s okay! I can get Twilight to enchant them or something,” Pinkie said. “The horns, I mean. Not the birds - ooh! Wait! Magic birds with party horns! That’s even better than regular birds with party horns!”

There was another moment of silence. “Um,” Fluttershy said. “…Ever since Rarity tried to transmute little sapphires into that blue jay’s feathers, no animals with wings will come near me if I say ‘enchantment’ and ‘birds’ in the same sentence.”

“So no magic birds?” Pinkie asked.

“No,” Fluttershy said. “No magic birds.”

“Atta girl, Fluttershy,” Rainbow Dash whispered, loudly. “C’mon, keep going.”

“I’m not sure, Rainbow Dash. Is now really the best time?” Fluttershy asked, in a far more sensible mumble.

“The best time for what?” Pinkie asked.

There was another moment of silence, then somepony took a deep breath.

“Pinkie Pie?” Fluttershy began. “There’s something I need to say-”

“Will. You. Three. PIPE. DOWN!” Bon Bon snapped, and Lapis turned his head just in time to watch her stalking out from her pile of blankets in much the same way he imagined a dragon might stalk out of its cave. “Some ponies are trying to sleep over here!”

“C'mon, Bon Bon!” Lyra said, as a solitary green hoof rose from the pile of blankets and waved vaguely in Bon Bon’s direction. “S’ okay, they’ll be done in a second. Get back inside, it’s nice and warm.”

“SORRY!” Pinkie called. “I’LL QUIET DOWN RIGHT AWAY, MA’AM!”.

Bon Bon huffed, then turned and pushed her way back into the blankets, head-first.

“…It can wait,” Fluttershy mumbled outside, so quietly that Lapis nearly didn’t hear. He did, however, hear an exasperated groan, followed by a whoosh of flapping wings as at least one of the pegasi flew off. A few seconds later, there was the squeaking sounds of balloons rubbing against each other, then the sound of a zipper being zipped, followed by silence.

Lapis rolled onto his side and pulled the blanket up to his chin. Definitely something to ask Nikki about, but for now, let’s just sleep.

Sleep. Sleeeep.

…Dammit. Lapis opened his eyes, then threw off his blankets and got to his hooves.

“I’m going to see how early it is out there,” he said, at a deliberately normal speaking volume. “Go take a walk, see whether the Corner Cafe’s open. Can I trust you two to hold my place in line?”

“Yep!” Lyra said.

“Mmm,” Bon Bon grumbled.

“Gotcha. I’ll bring food if anything’s open.”

“…Thanks,” Bon Bon said, as Lapis pushed through the tent flaps and looked around.

The sun was only just rising, a line of yellow on the horizon fading through pink and purple into the indigo sky. A few stars were still twinkling above, but they were quickly getting lost in the brightening sky, and the swirling wisps of cloud were becoming a spectacular orange. The crisp morning breeze seemed to pass right through Lapis’ coat, and his breath fogged in front of his face as he yawned, then shivered. Brr. Yep, early fall.

Lapis stretched his front and back legs in turn, took a deep breath, then started toward Ponyville proper at a quick trot. It’d taken him forever, but he’d finally managed to figure out why galloping tired him out so quickly - it wasn’t that he forgot to breathe when he was galloping, it was that breathing became impossible to do sustainably. He was used to being a human, which had enabled him to break into a run and hold it for sustained periods of time, once he’d learned how to get into a rhythm.

Ponies, it turned out, couldn’t do that. They could gallop for a while, a fair bit faster than a human, but they got out of breath pretty quickly - at a gallop, all four hooves needed to touch the ground in quick, successive bursts, meaning that most of the time Lapis’ torso was simply too compressed to fit enough air inside for breathing. If Lapis wanted to prioritize distance over speed, then he could trot, or maybe canter if he really wanted to push it.

The center of Ponyville wasn’t too far away, but it was far enough. Slowly, carefully, Lapis shifted into a canter, trying to pay attention to how he felt as he went. His nose and throat burned in the cold air, and small shocks ran up his legs every time his hooves impacted the dirt road. As Lapis’ body began to warm up, the morning chill didn’t diminish - the bite of it just became less urgent, more tolerable. Welcome, even, as it siphoned some of the excess heat from his chest, cooling him off before he could begin to sweat. In terms of pain, his muscles were burning, and he was getting a stitch in his side - but, nothing felt like joint or tendon pain, so he kept going.

The walk from Ponyville to Sweet Apple Acres took around ten minutes. At a canter, however, it only took a little more than five. When Lapis passed the first row of houses and slowed to a trot, he was grinning, even as he panted for breath. Definitely not my best pace for a morning jog, but not bad, either. Good weather for it, too. How long has it been - what, two and a half months now?

Yeah, I was definitely getting out of shape. Lapis slowed from a trot to a walk, registering the familiar burning in his thighs and shins, along with the less-familiar burning in his shoulders and… Forearms? Wrists? Other shins? Whatever. So, morning gallop no, morning canter yes. Hopefully that’ll help with some of the stress, too.

Lapis started looking around Ponyville, checking whatever restaurants he recognized for anything that resembled an “OPEN” sign. He knew the Corner Cafe’s hours, they wouldn’t be open for at least forty-five more minutes, so in the meantime… well, he’d take a walk, and think. And try not to obsess over either of the big conversations that had happened last night.

Lapis realized he’d stopped in the middle of the street. He sighed, then started trotting again. Too late.

Okay, so Lyra and Bon Bon now think I’ve only got a thing for griffons. That’s not great. But, since I don’t think griffons visit Ponyville often, and they aren’t trying to ask me about Applejack any more, I’m going to count that as a win. …Besides, I’m not really sure how I feel about pretending to be ace.

And Bon Bon… and Gumball, and Amanda. It occurred to Lapis that there might’ve been a reason he was inclined to go for a canter this morning, and he grimaced. …Yeah, that one still hurts. I still can’t believe she came up. But... well, at least I know Bon Bon gets it. And I've got extra incentive to not fall off the platform.

Lapis finished checking Ponyville’s market streets for signs of life, nodded, then turned and started trotting back toward his own house. Bubble-Bounce shield, Bubble-Bounce shield… nope, never heard of it. That leaves me two options: either ask Luna, or do my own research.

He briefly glanced in the direction of the Golden Oak, then snorted. Luna it is. Later, though. For now, I’ve got omelets to make… actually, y’know what? Omelets are pretty easy, I can multitask.

When Lapis arrived at his house, he found a scroll waiting on his doorstep. It was bound in a red ribbon, and sealed with golden wax. Stamped onto the seal was the emblem of a horseshoe, which - like much of Equestrian iconography - told Lapis absolutely nothing about who owned the icon, except that they were probably a pony.

He grabbed the scroll and tucked it into his saddlebag as he headed inside, stifling a yawn as he made his way into the kitchen. Once there, he removed Luna’s book from his bag and placed it on the counter, grabbing a charcoal pencil and writing as he levitated a carton of eggs to the stove. Hey, have you ever heard of a Bubble-Bounce shield?

It was a few minutes before the book buzzed, by which time Lapis had already made his own omelet, and was munching it down while he made Lyra’s. Nay, we have not, Luna replied. Though Celestia tells us we ought to know it well. For what reason dost thou inquire?

A friend of mine recommended it to me, Lapis wrote. Supposedly, it’s good protection against falling.

Ah, now we understand. We have always had wings, and so we did not need further protection, Luna wrote. We take it that thou meanest to find thyself in high places?

Only in the literal sense. Lapis slid Lyra’s omelet out of the frying pan, then dumped the bowl of scrambled eggs that would be Bon Bon’s in its place. Luna’s response followed almost immediately, and Lapis frowned as he turned to look.

Art thou quite certain? Luna had written, in lettering that was small, neat, and downright ominous.

Pretty positive, Lapis wrote back. Why, is there something I should be looking out for?

Nay, naught in particular. However, hast thou yet checked thine mail? A quite amusing incident recently transpired in the weather factory, and the Neighborly Neigh wrote a fine piece on the subject.

“Right,” Lapis muttered, levitating the scroll out of his saddlebag and giving it a wary look. Slowly, he pried off the seal and unfurled it.

A small, gleaming strip of gold fell free from the scroll, swaying back and forth through the air as it fell - and promptly landed in Bon Bon’s half-solid omelet. “Shit,” Lapis muttered, setting the scroll aside and grabbing a fork.

Once he'd scraped off the egg yolk, he was able to identify the strip of gold foil. It was a ticket, one with the words 'Grand Galloping Gala' inscribed into its front. It took him five seconds to realize what those words meant, and then thirty more before he noticed that Bon Bon's breakfast was burning.

Author's Note

Patch Notes:

Lyra, during Bon Bon's argument with Lapis, was able to clone herself, and one of her clones briefly swapped places with Bon Bon. We think that somehow, one of the Mirror Pond's functions got called - all associated functions have been renamed, which will invariably cause more problems, but at least this one is fixed. (ramdom_player201)

Hey, welcome back! So, forst and fistmost... yeah. That was some stuff, that happened around that campfire. There's a line that I'm trying to walk here, between "angst for no reason" and "emotions with purpose" - my goal, which I hopefully achieved, is to show two things: first, there's something that Lapis is more afraid of than Pinkie Pie, and second, that while Equestria is still rainbows and gumdrops, it has a ~~realistic~~ convincing degree of points in time when life sucks. But, those negative experiences don't, and shouldn't, turn into a 'mine's-bigger' contest of who's suffered the most - instead, they provide an opportunity for connections to grow.

(Side-note: I'm really not a big fan of the word 'realism.' It spends far too much time in the company of the word 'gritty' - not to be confused with Gritty, who is a mildly terrifying but somewhat benign hockey mascot native to Philadelphia.)

Also, in case any of you didn't catch the fine print on my blog here, I am working with a fan timeline, the link to which is here. Note the proximity of 'The Best Night Ever' to 'The Return of Harmony.'

And finally: may I offer you a jpg, served with a smattering of absent context?

(it's not just a black box I promise, I've spoilered it)

Anyway, that's all I've got for now, and I'll see you in the next one! 'Till then!

The Sun: Creeping, Crawling Concerns

The hatch that led into Lapis Print’s attic shuddered in its frame. It wiggled, jiggled, then suddenly swung open as-

Nikki popped through, bursting into the attic with a flurry of feathers. She flopped down onto it, panting for breath but grinning regardless.

She’d been trying to get into Lapis’ roof on her own for weeks. Her, and about a quarter of the birds in Ponyville, though most of the birds had given up on getting through the shingles once they’d realized the roof was made of metal.

Here’s hopin’ Tippy Taps the woodpecker gets outta Fluttershy’s soon. Poor guy. Nikki glanced up at the metal shingles again, and absently brushed a wing across her beak. It was only two days ago that she’d remembered that the attic had an access hatch, and only today that she’d finally pushed it wide enough to enter through.

Nikki’s frown grew into a scowl as she looked around Lapis’ attic, and began to question whether it’d been worth the trouble to break in - as places to hunker down for the winter went, this was definitely the economy option. There wasn’t any thatch or spare bedding to repurpose into a nest, the rafters were too narrow and metallic to build a nest on top of anyway, and there was a constant clattering, clinking noise coming from the spire of metal gizmos at the center of the room. Not to mention, the entire place was chock-full of glimmering spiderwebs.

Unfortunately, Nikki’s acquaintances were starting to run out of options. Somepony, she didn’t know who, was real keen on reporting roofing damages, and Lapis had gotten quick enough at thatch-patching that a few lazier pigeons had gotten trapped in attics as they slept.

Nikki had to look after her flock, and that meant finding them a place to set up shop until winter was over. And, as she took another look around Lapis’ attic, she had to admit the place had two advantages over its competition: first, it was big enough to house every pigeon in Ponyville, and second, it was available. Not perfect, not by a long way, but it would do.

Now she just had to figure out whether Lapis would be okay with loaning his attic out to every single pigeon in Ponyville-

Nikki felt a faint tickling sensation at the back of her neck, and reflexively brushed a wing over the top of her head. To her surprise, her flight feathers bent like they’d collided with something, slapping it off to the side. She startled, flying up to one of the rafters and glancing back to where she’d been sitting, to find…

Nothing?

Nikki grimaced. Yeesh, this place gives me the creeps. Better clear it out quick, ‘fore I change my mind about holing up here.

Lapis stared down at the stack of toilet paper rolls sitting atop the lid of his toilet. Not for the first time, he wished that it hadn’t come to this.

Slowly, he levitated the first roll off the lid of the toilet, unrolled it a little, then began to wrap it around his back left leg. Little by little, loop by loop, he worked his way up his leg, wrapped once around… Did ponies think of it as a waist, or did they just consider it a part of their torso?

Whatever the case, Lapis wrapped the toilet paper once around his body before he began to spiral his way down his other back leg. By the time he’d finished, the roll was halfway gone. Just enough to do my front legs, I think.

The most ironic thing about being a toilet-paper mummy for Halloween was that, despite being the low-effort, last-ditch option in theory, it actually took a bit more effort than a store-bought costume. You couldn’t just step into a jumpsuit, zip up a zipper, and put on a mask - no, you had to figure out how to actually roll the toilet paper around your body. If you got it too loose, then your ‘bandages’ would just fall off. Or, if you got it too tight, it would tear as soon as you stretched. Both options would result in the costume falling off, and then you’d just be some normal guy standing in a pile of toilet paper.

This was the first year that Lapis had to worry about being just some normal pony standing in a pile of toilet paper, but it wasn’t his first year being a toilet-paper mummy. Even as a pony, it took two layers. I guess some things never change.

Lapis briefly checked his work in the mirror, then nodded. “Okay,” he muttered, bracing himself up on his bathroom sink and staring at his reflection. “Now, remember,” he began, but he trailed off.

There was a pony in the mirror. There always was. And yet, as Lapis stared at the unicorn opposite himself, swathed head-to-hoof in sheets of toilet paper and staring back with brown eyes that were far too wide, he suddenly realized that he hadn’t looked in the mirror very often since he’d come to Ponyville.

Lapis shook his head, then glared at his reflection, trying to put the impending identity crisis out of his mind. “There is no such thing as Halloween,” he recited.

Lapis’ reflection glared stubbornly back at him.

“I am celebrating Nightmare Night. There is no such thing,” Lapis repeated, “as Halloween-”

The sheet of toilet paper that was draped across Lapis’ muzzle fell off, and he levitated it back into place, tucking it back under the strip below his eyes. It fell back out at once, and Lapis groaned, then began to unwind the toilet paper that was around his head, being careful not to let it catch on his horn.

…Huh. Wait a second. Lapis concentrated, then stared at his reflection in the mirror again, doing his best to ignore how unfamiliar the face he’d just revealed was as he carefully wrapped it back up. He was left with the end of the strip, which he carefully threaded through the strips on the top of his head, then speared on the tip of his horn.

“Yep,” Lapis muttered, checking his work in the mirror. “I look stupid.” He quickly tucked the loose end of the strip under the bandages, then met his own eyes again. “Okay. One more time: There’s no such thing as Halloween. I’m celebrating Nightmare Night, just like I always have. Ready?”

Lapis watched his own stare waver, then he looked down into the sink for a second, chuckling. “Nope. Here we go.”

He took a deep breath, then pushed open the door and stepped into the rest of his house.

Luckily, it wasn’t quite Nightmare Night yet. The sun was just beginning to set, casting a pumpkin-orange glow over the rooftops of Ponyville and through the massive window of Lapis’ storefront. It was a little warmer than Lapis was used to for the end of October; he was used to watching his breath turn into fog even before it got past his mask. But, if everypony else’s costumes were anything to judge by, the cold wasn’t typically a Nightmare-Night concern.

Either that, or they’re all just used to having fur coats, Lapis thought, as he pushed open his door, slung his saddlebags across his back, and stepped out onto the street.

Lapis had decorated his shop, just a little. There was a pair of freshly-carved jack-o’-lanterns stationed at either side of his door, candles already flickering away behind their buck-toothed grins and googly eyes. Around Lapis’ window, several splintery pieces of scrap wood had been cobbled together into a frame, so that - from outside - his shop looked vaguely like a glowing mouth filled with pointy, jagged teeth. The spiderwebs-

Lapis paused, frowning. Spiderwebs? I didn’t get any spiderwebs. But, well, there they were, filling up the corners of Lapis’ eaves and hanging down from the windowsill - wide, glimmering spiderwebs, without a single spider to be seen. They looked real, if a little shinier than usual, and they definitely contributed to the decorations.

You know what? Lapis thought, grinning. Sure, I’ll take it. He turned away and started down the street toward Town Hall, taking in the rest of the town’s decorations as he went.

To his surprise, most of Ponyville didn’t seem keen on making their houses look creepy. If anything, they were just enjoying the chance to use a darker color palate - Lapis hadn’t seen this much purple, green, and black in one place for a while, but the banners and streamers that had already been hung used little else. Still, he could see a couple of recurring symbols. The biggest one seemed to be a side-profile of a unicorn’s head, with a slit-pupiled eye at its center. Probably Nightmare Moon… and, well, I guess she was pretty terrifying, but now that I’m writing to Princess Luna every so often, I just can’t see it as much.

Even the costumes seemed to avoid being scary. Most ponies weren’t in costume yet, but Lapis could see a pirate, a racecar driver, and Pinkie Pie dressed as a chicken-

Lapis felt himself tense, stopping in his tracks as his head turned toward the nearest alleyway. He took a deep breath, forced himself to relax, and continued trotting toward Town Hall as Pinkie Pie casually rounded a corner and vanished from view, bobbing her head back and forth as she went.

-Anyway, even with the chance to be in-costume, Lapis had yet to see anypony who was genuinely frightening. …On purpose. Maybe Nightmare Night wasn’t as much about the spooky side of life as Halloween was?

Guess I’ll find out. Lapis climbed the steps outside Town Hall, then pulled open the door and stepped inside.

Town Hall was basically empty, save for a few ponies who were busy hanging some paper skull lanterns (it was difficult to say for sure, but by the size of the eye-holes, Lapis judged the lanterns to be modeled after pony skulls). Besides them, it was just Lapis and Mayor Mare. She was standing beside an array of mirrors, trying to position a poofy, multi-colored clown wig atop her head with one hoof, mumbling under her breath as it slid back and forth. “-Oh… Really? I’m not asking for a miracle or anything, just- Oh! Lapis, is that you?”

“Sure is,” Lapis said, as the Mayor turned to face him. “Hey, I figured I should drop by before the festivities get into full swing, check whether there’s anything special you want me to look out for.”

Mayor Mare frowned, tapping her hoof to her chin. “Oh? Well, I’m glad you’re thinking ahead…”

Maybe Lapis just didn’t like clowns, but the Mayor’s costume was the second-closest thing to ‘scary’ he’d seen all day. She’d done a little bit of the makeup, applying some white triangles above her eyes and framing her mouth with red, but most of her costume was accomplished via clothing - she had a blue shirt with white ruffles, oversized red shoes, an enormous orange-and-yellow bow tie, and a round, bright red nose.

“…Not tonight, no,” Mayor Mare eventually said. “Just a ripped banner or two, really - it’s only Nightmare Night, after all!”

Mayor Mare’s face darkened. “Now, when we get to Hearth’s Warming Eve… well, that’ll be another story, but never mind that for now. How are you, Lapis? I’d heard you had an episode just before the Princess’ last visit.”

Lapis shook his head. “Uh, actually, not so much. Good thing, too - Cascades suck. Nah, I just made a bad decision trying to stop the doll, and scored a nasty case of mana-burn out of it. Don’t worry, though, I got better pretty quick.”

“Well, that’s good to hear,” Mayor Mare said, smiling. “That you’re better, I mean. Keeping this town running is a tough job to put on anypony’s shoulders, and you’d be amazed how much weight you’ve been keeping off mine. Which reminds me, actually, how’s bird season been treating you?”

Lapis cocked an eyebrow. “Bird season-? Oh, is that why I’ve been fixing so much thatch lately?”

Mayor Mare nodded, chuckling. “It happens every year. Most birds are fine with flying south for the winter, but there’s always exceptions. And, well, most ponies don’t go up in their attics very often.”

“So the birds try to nest there,” Lapis said, nodding as the recent repairs finally made sense. “Huh. Well, that explains a lot. Although, now that I think about it, most of the notices I’ve been getting about thatch have been written by the same pony.”

“Have they?” Mayor Mare asked, her eyes widening in surprise.

Lapis nodded. “Their hoofwriting could be better, whoever they are, but at least they’re letting me know about the roofwork. You don’t know who might be writing all those notices, do you?”

“Not a clue, I’m afraid,” Mayor Mare said. “If they’re so well-informed about the rooftops, then I expect they’re a pegasus, but that’s really just a hunch-” Her wig fell off, bouncing a little against the floor. “-Oop! Oh, not again. The darn thing just won’t stay put!”

“I got it,” Lapis said, levitating the wig off the ground and rotating it in the air above Mayor Mare’s head. “Hey, hang on, there’s a couple of slots in there. You think they’re for your ears?”

Mayor Mare’s eyes widened, then she chuckled. “Oh. Well, I don’t know how I missed those, but yes.” She reached up, plucking the wig from the air and slotting it into place atop her head. “And… perfect! But anyway, yes, what I said about your mystery pony being a pegasus is really just a hunch, so I certainly wouldn’t count on it.”

“Gotcha,” Lapis said, and then something in his saddlebag buzzed. Wait, what? …Oh, Luna’s book must be in there. Did she just write to me about something?

“Anyway, I was going to go check up with Lyra and Bon Bon, next,” Lapis said, glancing back toward the door. “Was there anything you needed, Mayor Mare?”

“You’ll find out soon enough,” Mayor Mare intoned, adopting a grin which would have been menacing, if not for the laugh-lines around her eyes. “Mua-ha-ha-h-” She burst into a brief coughing fit, then cleared her throat. “Hm. Well, I suppose that’s why we rehearse before a performance. At any rate, no, nothing for now. Happy Nightmare Night, Lapis!”

“You too,” Lapis said, grinning as he turned and left Town Hall.

As soon as Lapis was outside, he started for the nearest alley, checking the skies for any airborne observers as he went. Rainbow Dash was a few hundred feet out, wearing some kind of black-and-yellow jumpsuit as she slowly pushed a small, nearly-black thundercloud toward Ponyville airspace - luckily, she was facing the other way.

Lapis ducked out of sight, put a rain-barrel between himself and the street, then opened Luna’s book and started flipping to the most recent page.

Luna’s newest message didn’t take long to find - scribed across the top of the first blank page were the words, Art thou terribly preoccupied?

Not so much, Lapis wrote. Just getting ready for Nightmare Night. You?

“Nightmare Night?” Luna asked, her brow creasing. “Hm.” Perhaps ponies have begun facing their own fears in our absence?

Luna wasn’t sure whether the thought was a pleasant surprise, or a disturbing one. It would be a relief to know that ponies had helped each other with nightmares during the past thousand years. That would free her of at least some guilt, were it true.

However, Equestria seemed to have become quite peaceable in her absence. Aside from dreamwalking, moving the moon, and serving as her sister’s office assistant, Luna presently had very few duties indeed. If all Luna’s roles had become outdated, if any suitably competent accountant could serve in the stead of the Princess of the Night… well, then Luna wasn’t sure what she’d do.

Luna shook her head, clearing it of those thoughts, then returned her quill to the page. We meant to inform thee further concerning the Gala, she wrote, but tell us first of this ‘Nightmare Night.’

Lapis blinked, then frowned. Then, his eyes shot wide open.

“Oh,” he muttered. “Well, shit.”

It took several seconds before Lapis started writing his response. Nightmare Night’s a celebration of everything spooky. Ponies dress up in costumes and carve faces in pumpkins, foals and fillies go door-to-door demanding candy, and there’s games and festival food. Pretty great holiday, I almost prefer it over Hearth’s Warming Eve.

“Ah,” Luna said, and she felt her wings relaxing a little. It must be excellent indeed, then, she wrote. Perhaps we ought to join the festivities?

Lapis’ next few words were written slowly and deliberately. That may not be a good plan.

Luna frowned. For what reason?

Maybe ask Princess Celestia about that one. I’m not the right pony to tell you.

Luna’s brow furrowed as she processed the implications of that sentence, and she found herself taking a slow, deep breath.

This holiday, she wrote. It celebrates that which frightens, does it not?

Yes, but-

And we are celebrated, we take it?

-but, they aren’t taking it that seriously. Sure, the holiday is named after the thing that possessed you-

Luna felt the world drop away from beneath her hooves. Lapis, oblivious to this, continued writing.

-but today isn’t Hate-Princess-Luna day or anything. There’s a lot of scary stories that get told tonight. You know, about ghosts, or maybe Dr. Frankenstallion-

Luna set her quill to the page again. Thou art in Ponyville?

Yeah, they’re getting everything set up right now-

Prepare for our arrival.

Luna snapped the book shut, set it upon her nightstand, then turned toward the balcony of her tower bedroom. She levitated a traveling cloak from the wardrobe by her bed, straightening her regalia as she looked out from her balcony.

From Canterlot, Luna could just make out the dark patch of Ponyville on the horizon. Flying there herself would surely be fastest, but it would likely disturb her mane and coat, and she would need to look her very best for what was to come.

Because Luna refused to be any pony’s scary story. No longer was she a monster lurking in the shadows, and no longer would she stand to be known as such. It was time to remind Ponyville that they had two princesses.

“We are going to have words after tonight, Celestia,” Luna muttered. She turned back from the balcony, strode to the door of her bedroom, and assumed the position: head back, chin up, legs straight, wings spread.

“Do, re, mi, fa, so, la, ti, do,” she muttered.

Then, she summoned her magic and pushed open the door. The thestral guard standing outside turned to glance in her direction, his slit-pupiled eyes meeting her own without flinching.

“PREPARE OUR CHARIOT,” said Princess Luna, and the stones of the palace shook with her voice as she strode forth.

“…Damn it,” Lapis muttered. He grimaced, then stuffed the book back into his saddlebags, glancing at the sky. It was getting close to sunset now, but it wouldn’t be night for a while yet - and hopefully, Luna wouldn’t arrive before then.

Lapis started trotting toward Bon Bon’s shop, continuing to scan the sky as he wracked his brains for any relevant memories. He got something about Twilight dressed as a wizard, but that was it. Well, at least I know this part’s supposed to happen, even if I don’t know whether I’m supposed to be the reason it happens.

Still, I was really hoping Mayor Mare would be right about today being an easy day.

“Oh, hey Lapis!” Lyra said, as Lapis drew up alongside Bon Bon’s candy shop. The sun had very nearly finished setting now, and the Ponyville sky was turning a deep, vibrant shade of glittering purple. “Nice costume!”

“Thanks, you too,” Lapis said, glancing at the frilly, baby-blue bonnet perched atop Lyra’s head. “Uh, pioneer, right?”

“I honestly have no idea,” Lyra said, giggling as she adjusted the bonnet. “I think I stole this from my great-grandma when I was a filly, and it’s just been kinda sitting in my dresser ever since. …Hey, what’s up? Your ears are doing that thing again.”

Lapis stopped in his tracks, trying and failing to look up at his own ears. “…Uh, what? What ‘thing?’”

“Y’know, the whole trying-to-hear-everything-at-once thing,” Lyra said, and as she spoke, her ears started swiveling and rotating in place atop her head like a pair of pointy satellite dishes. “…Uh-oh. There isn’t prophecy stuff happening, right?”

“Not sure yet,” Lapis muttered, quickly looking around. “Tell you inside, c’mon.”

They ducked through the door just in time for Bon Bon to emerge from the kitchen, wearing an enormous tube of plastic wrap around her torso - it had been twisted shut at the front and back of her body, so that in profile she looked a lot like a wrapped piece of taffy. “Never… doing this… again,” she was muttering, taking slow, exaggerated steps around the store, the plastic wrap creaking as it shifted across her torso. “Doesn’t… breathe at all. Hey, Lyra, you wanna help me punch some air-holes in this thing? Hello, Lapis.”

“Hey, Bon Bon,” Lapis said.

“In a second,” Lyra said. “I think Lapis has prophecy stuff going on again.”

Bon Bon cocked an eyebrow. “Oh, goody. What’s going on?”

“Luna’s visiting tonight,” Lapis said.

“Oh, goody,” Bon Bon repeated.

“Uh-oh,” Lyra said, at exactly the same time. “Okay, so is it an Equestria’s-in-danger visit, or what?”

“I think it’s more casual,” Lapis said, raising one hoof in a half-shrug, “but I’m really not sure. She just asked me what I was doing, I said I was getting ready for Nightmare Night, and then she asked me to explain what Nightmare Night was.”

“She didn’t know?” Lyra said, her eyes growing wide.

“I tried to break it to her gently,” Lapis said, wincing. “But, well… yeah, she’s visiting Ponyville tonight.”

Bon Bon nodded slowly, then groaned under her breath, facehoofing. “This won’t be good. Why was she even writing to you, anyway? Does she just check on you every so often?”

“Nope,” Lapis said, firmly shaking his head. “She was going to explain something about my tutorship. Which reminds me, apparently the deadline for me to make a decision is somewhere around the end of February.”

“Hey, wait a second,” Bon Bon said, holding up a hoof. “Did she at least explain why your deadline is the end of February?”

Lapis opened his mouth, the words ‘no idea’ halfway up his throat, and then he remembered sitting by the campfire with the two of them. You know what? No. No more lies, not to Bon Bon and Lyra. Whatever I come up with would honestly just get in the way at this point.

“…Because that’s when the Grand Galloping Gala happens,” he admitted.

Lyra’s eyes widened, and Bon Bon blinked. “So, Princess Celestia wants to make sure the Gala is off her plate first, or…”

Lapis grimaced, then telekinetically reached into his saddlebag, gripping the strip of gold foil tucked between the pages of Luna’s book and levitating it into the light. “I was, uh, kind of invited.”

Bon Bon’s eyebrows shot up, and Lyra’s jaw dropped. …And they’re freaking out. Okay, maybe if I act like this is normal, it’ll help them calm down?

Lapis grinned awkwardly, then tucked the ticket back into the book. “So, uh, I have no idea where to buy formal wear, but it’s got to be a necessity, right?”

“Oh, gosh,” Lyra breathed. “Oh gosh, oh gosh ohgosh…”

“Lapis,” Bon Bon said, slowly and calmly. “Which Princess sent you that ticket?”

“Uh,” Lapis said, glancing back and forth between the two ponies. “Luna did, but she said that it was Celestia’s idea. …Why, is there something I should know?”

“Okay. Alright. Alrighty,” Lyra continued, beginning to hyperventilate as a wild grin spread across her face.

“Well,” Bon Bon said, shooting Lyra a look (which Lyra didn’t seem to notice, as she was more focused on trying to breathe normally). “Princess Celestia is officially the pony in charge of sending out round one of invitations. She basically established the Gala as an excuse to check on everypony on her contacts list. So, if you’d gotten that ticket during the summer, then it would just mean she wanted you there, which is… a big deal, but a professional big deal.”

Lyra began a giggling fit as Lapis felt a tingle of dread building in his gut, Bon Bon sparing another second to glare at Lyra before continuing to speak. “…Round two of tickets happens anytime after round one, and those tickets are basically just everypony who got a plus-one figuring out who their plus-one is going to be.”

“So you think I got a plus-one ticket?” Lapis asked, cocking an eyebrow. “Okay, what’s the big deal?”

Lyra tried, and failed, to stifle another giggling fit. Bon Bon didn’t spare her a glance this time, instead closing her eyes and taking a deep breath, a weary grin tugging at the corners of her mouth.

“Well,” Bon Bon eventually said, “it could mean the same thing as if Princess Celestia sent it. Princess Luna’s station is the same as hers, so Princess Celestia probably just wanted to set some expectations. To show the rest of Canterlot that Princess Luna could have an equal hoof in choosing who attends the Gala.”

“…Or?” Lapis asked. Lyra had finally managed to silence herself, and was now watching the conversation with rapt attention, glancing between Bon Bon and Lapis like they were having a tennis match.

“Or,” Bon Bon said, slowly and calmly, “you’re Princess Luna’s plus-one. And being somepony’s plus-one to the Gala has a certain… historical context to it. It’s handy for introducing an up-and-coming associate to the rest of the aristocracy, which somepony might want to do for any number of reasons. And one of those reasons, the reason why Lyra is overreacting, is courtship.”

Lapis felt his eyes widen, his ears flopping back atop his head.

“Okay, so, sure, she’s not a griffon,” Lyra said, gesturing with a hoof. “But, she is kind of a princess, so that’s gotta count for something, right? Plus, she’s got wings!”

“Uh,” Lapis said.

“…Lyra, would you like a glass of water,” Bon Bon said, as Lyra opened her mouth again.

“Right. Right, sorry,” Lyra said, taking a deep breath, a grin still plastered to her face. “I’ll just… okay, I know I’m freaking out, I’m sorry, but this is just- this is every Mane Austen book I’ve ever read! Lapis, a princess invited you to the Grand Galloping Gala! How are you two not freaking out?!”

“Yeah, I’m definitely freaking out,” Lapis said, shaking his head. “I’m just keeping it inside my head for now. Uh, Bon Bon? You don’t really think Princess Luna is… uh, interested, do you?”

“Probably not,” Bon Bon said, and Lapis heaved a sigh of relief.

“But it’s not impossible,” she added, and Lapis grimaced. “I don’t know anypony else who can write to her except maybe Twilight, and you did say that Princess Luna made a habit of showing up in your dreams.”

“Great,” Lapis said. “Okay, so, what does that mean for tonight?”

Lyra shrugged. “I guess it means you should get ready? I mean, that’s what she asked you to do, right?”

“Okay, sure. How?” Lapis gestured to his body. “Do I need to find something to wear that’s more formal than toilet paper, or what?”

Bon Bon shook her head. “No, keep your costume. And if there was anything you wanted to do, maybe wrap that up.”

Lyra glanced between Bon Bon and Lapis’ costumes, then giggled. “Oh, I wouldn’t worry about wrapping stuff up - between the two of you, I think you’ve got everything covered!”

Lapis frowned, confused. “Wh-”

Bon Bon cut him off with a groan, the plastic wrap around her shoulders squeaking as she rubbed the bridge of her nose with a hoof. “Lyra…”

“Sorry, I had to,” Lyra said, grinning and trotting back behind the desk. “Hang on, I gotta get a hole punch for Bon Bon- whoa. Uh, hey, Lapis, are you feeling okay?”

“I’ve been better, but yeah, no major health concerns,” Lapis said, glancing over in her direction. “What’s up?”

“Well, I don’t wanna pry or anything, but, uh,” Lyra said, wincing. “…The junk drawer just organized itself.”

Bon Bon’s eyebrows shot up, and Lapis facehoofed, feeling his ears flopping back atop his head as Lyra continued speaking. “So, like, if you don’t wanna talk about it, I’m not gonna push, but I’ll totally listen if there’s something you need to say!”

“Sorry,” Lapis said groaning under his breath. “I thought I’d gotten that under- yeah, my bad. I just really wished I had a plan, besides hoping I remember something that could help.”

“No worries,” Lyra said, levitating the hole punch out from the drawer. “We can talk about it, right? Bon Bon, c’mere real quick.”

“For what it’s worth, I’m almost positive Her Highness doesn’t have romantic intentions,” Bon Bon said, walking over to stand beside Lyra. “…But I’d definitely wonder whether she’s going to be your tutor.”

“I don’t know,” Lyra said, carefully worming the hole punch under Bon Bon’s costume, Bon Bon wincing as the tool dug into her side. “Tutorship under a Princess kinda… well, you’ve gotta be somepony really special. I only heard about this from some student gossip, but didn’t Twilight have, like, some kinda big thing that got Princess Celestia’s attention?”

“She did,” Bon Bon confirmed. “She was just taking her entrance exams, and managed to hatch a dragon egg. That’s where her assistant, Spike, came from. -Ow, Lyra, that’s my coat!”

“Oops,” Lyra said, her ears folding back as she smiled. “Sorry, BB - oh, shoot, the hole punch got stuck. Uh, Lapis, could you come over here and help me get this thing out really quick?”

Nikki had decided that, before anything else, all the spiderwebs in Lapis’ attic had to go.

Right now, there were enough spiderwebs in the attic that she was half-afraid to try flying through the room. They criss-crossed through the air in the dusty space, their glimmering strands shattering the attic into an angular mosaic of dark wood and dully-gleaming copper. Luckily, she had yet to see any spiders - though, occasionally, she would feel a tickle on the back of her wings or atop her feet that sent her startling into the air for a few wingbeats. Probably just her imagination, but she was still unsettled.

She had been strutting up and down the length of the attic, sweeping her wings through one stripe of glimmering, silken strands at a time. This was proving to be more and more unpleasant as Nikki continued, however - at the end of every stripe, she had to stop and spend several minutes clearing the webbing off her wings with her beak. And every single time she did, even though it was just her imagination, Nikki kept feeling as if the loose ends brushing up against her face were spiders crawling all over herself.

Nikki was working her way down the fourth stripe of the attic now, and the buildup of web in her flight feathers was nearly too much to bear. She longed to get out of the attic, find a bird-bath somewhere, and spend the rest of the night washing herself clean of the persistent tickling sensation that had now spread from her wings and onto her back. She wondered vaguely if this was how a fly must feel, when it was all wrapped up and ready to be eaten - if spiders tickled, before they bit.

It was then that Nikki felt a set of tiny, light, and unmistakably real legs, gingerly tapping their way up the back of her neck.

Homing pigeons are surprisingly fast animals, which is part of the reason they were historically used to carry messages. Over distances of around 600 miles (~160.9 km), they can maintain an average speed of 60 miles per hour (~96.7 kmh), with top racers reaching 100 miles per hour (~160.9 kmh) in shorter flights.

Nikki was not a top racing pigeon. She nonetheless achieved a very respectable 82 miles per hour (~132 kmh) as she took off for the hatch that led out of the attic, fleeing the building as fast as her wings could carry her. The legs atopher head only managed to hold on for a second or two before being swept off in the wind, landing atop Lapis’ doorstep with a dull, hard smack.

Back in the attic, a single glimmering strand of silk began to extend from one of the rafters, extruding from empty air until it reached the attic floor - there, it fastened itself in place, swaying in the wake of Nikki’s panicked departure. And slowly, a whisper-quiet rustle filled the attic space: the stuttering, hesitant crawl of dozens, and dozens, and dozens of tiny, invisible feet.

Half an hour later, Lapis and Bon Bon were making their way down Nutmeg Way toward Lapis’ house. The moon had risen, and Bon Bon was walking awkwardly - Lyra’s hole punch was still stuck in the plastic wrap, as was a pair of scissors, a butter knife, a chef’s knife, and an umbrella.

“I am never,” Bon Bon muttered, “never, ever going to use plastic-wrap for anything, ever again.” With every step Bon Bon took, her costume creaked around her joints; one of her ears was twitching in time with every creak.

“Are you kidding?” Lapis said, cocking an eyebrow. “This stuff’s stood up to just about everything in your kitchen, Bon Bon. I might need to figure out who made this plastic wrap, so I can start buying from them.”

“Uh-huh,” Bon Bon said. “You think Lyra will be able to find a better costume before Nightmare Night is over?”

“Probably,” Lapis said. “Worst-case scenario, I teach you how to be a toilet-paper mummy.”

“Great. Can we hurry it up a little?” Bon Bon said, wincing as she stopped to rotate one of her shoulders, the plastic wrap squeaking like balloons rubbing together. “It’s starting to get kinda sticky in here.”

Lapis winced. “Don’t worry about it. My new set of gem-cutting tools arrived a couple days ago. Any knife that can put a dent in diamonds should go through that plastic wrap like butter.”

They turned right, approaching Lapis’ front door, and Bon Bon cocked an eyebrow at the spiderwebs. “Huh. Where’d you get the webs?”

Lapis cocked an eyebrow. “The what?”

“The spiderwebs,” Bon Bon said, gesturing to the glimmering webbing on Lapis’ awning. “You know, for the decor- what happened to your windows?!”

“Decorating,” Lapis said, pulling open the door and stepping into his house. “I was kinda trying to make the windows look like they had teeth. I didn’t do the spiderwebs, though - as far as I can tell, they just showed up there this morning.”

“Uh-huh,” Bon Bon said, casting a wary glance up and down the webs as she followed Lapis inside. “You should probably sweep your porch more often, Lapis.”

“Yeah, probably,” Lapis agreed, pulling open the closet door. “Be right back, hang on.”

Lapis shut the closet door, then hurried down into the basement. His new set of gemcutting tools was spread out across the workbench, the single-edged blades glimmering in the lanternlight of the room. Lapis levitated one of the smaller knives over to his side, then paused, glancing at the spot on his workbench where Nikki would usually sit.

Haven’t seen her all day, Lapis realized. Huh. Hope she’s doing alright. As an afterthought, Lapis snatched up one of the longer, thinner pieces of scrap wood before going back upstairs.

When Lapis re-emerged into his living room, he found Bon Bon preoccupied with trying to pull the umbrella free of the plastic wrap. As far as Lapis could tell, Bon Bon’s costume had barely even stretched yet.

“Okay,” Bon Bon panted, “at this point, I’m starting to wonder if this is even plastic wrap. …What’s the shim for?”

“It goes between you, and the knife that can cut diamonds,” Lapis said, carefully beginning to wedge the board beneath the plastic wrap. “Alright, take a deep breath…”

Princess Luna had not ridden in a carriage in a very, very long time.

Part of her wanted to enjoy it. To bask in the wind rushing across her face and through her cloak, to look down on the view and smile without worrying about all the minute adjustments and careful timing required for flight. Luna hadn’t been able to fly on the moon; the air was too thin there, almost nonexistent. In the rare moments when her thoughts weren’t… elsewhere, she’d dearly missed flight.

However, now was no time to relax. Nor was it the time to dwell upon the monster she had been - rather, it would soon be time to overcome that monster. To prove to the ponies who still feared it that they no longer had any need to fear. To finally demonstrate, beyond the last shadow of a doubt, that Luna was not the terror of their nightmares any longer - that, rather, she was but a Princess of Equestria.

The carriage flew over top of a forest, and they came into view of Ponyville for the first time. Luna looked down on the village, and blinked in surprise - she hadn’t noticed, when she’d visited as the Nightmare, but Ponyville was more sizable than she’d expected. Its glimmering sprawl of colorful banners and flickering lanterns covered more land than two of every three settlements that Luna remembered from her own time.

If Celestia calls this but a village, than ponies have grown much in our absence, Princess Luna thought - then, lightning flashed as she grinned. Now, wait a moment- Ha! This is no village at all, but a full town! Sly as ever, sister. Forgive us for borrowing thy humor, but we must somehow make clear that we do not take ourselves too seriously.

Though, we must trust that the townsfolk will see your jest for what it is, sooner than we did. ‘Twould be humiliating if we led the citizens of Ponyville to believe their fine town is too small for our standards…

Princess Luna considered the thought as her chariot made a banking turn, beginning to line up with the large street near the center of Ponyville. …Nay, we shall make the jest regardless. If we are to show ourselves recovered, then we must take the risk of some small levity.

Within a few minutes, Lapis grinned, twirled the gem-cutting knife midair, then set it off to the side. “…Done. Alright, Bon Bon, how you feeling?”

“Much better,” Bon Bon said, kicking the last of the plastic wrap off her hooves. “…So, about how long ago did those spiderwebs-”

Bon Bon was cut off by a crack of lightning outside. She and Lapis both flinched, glancing out the window - then, scratchy-voiced laughter began to echo over from somewhere in the distance, and Bon Bon groaned. “Rainbow Dash. Her and her pranks, I swear.”

Lapis nodded as if he understood how Rainbow Dash was involved with lightning, then cleared his throat. “So, uh, really quick. Do you honestly have any idea who my tutor might really be? Like, how sure are you that it’ll actually be Princess Luna, instead of somepony who isn’t already trying to manage an entire kingdom?”

Bon Bon snorted, then smirked as she sat back on the floor, her ears pricked forward. “Honestly, in most situations, the odds would be next to zero. Princess Luna already has a lot on her plate, between picking up her dream-keeping duties and adjusting to modern Equestria. You’ll probably be assigned to somepony with a lower profile - a promising grad student, or maybe a retired professor.”

Lapis nodded - but as much as he wanted to be relieved, there was something about Bon Bon’s phrasing that was nagging at him. “…In most situations?”

Bon Bon’s smirk faded, and she eventually let out a sigh. “Listen, being somepony’s plus-one… there’s a lot of reasons it can happen. Especially considering that we’re talking about Princess Luna here. Princess Celestia always invites a plus-one to the Gala, usually as a reward for ponies in government who’ve been going above and beyond their job. Since Princess Luna’s only just returned, my guess is that she’s inviting a plus-one of her own as a reminder: to help everypony realize that she’s on equal standing with Princess Celestia. It doesn’t mean that she’s going to be your tutor, or that she’s interested in courting you - it just means that you’re the only other pony she knows, besides Princess Celestia.”

Bon Bon cocked her head to the side, then smirked again. “That, and Lyra’s just read too many court romance novels. Just ignore her, alright? It’ll be fine-”

Another crack of lightning shook Lapis’ shop, sending dust hissing through the floorboards. Lapis thought he felt something land atop his head, but saw nothing when he looked up.

Bon Bon groaned. “I swear to Celestia, the next time I see Rainbow Dash…”

“Wait,” Lapis said, frowning. “You hear that wind?”

Bon Bon glanced at him, then turned her head toward the door. The wind was howling beneath it, filling the house with an eerie whistling. Outside, the banners and lanters were rippling and rattling, nearly torn from their strings, and lightning was still flashing outside.

Then, from near the center of town, an accented voice spoke with enough volume to rattle Lapis’ window in its frame.

“CITIZENS OF PONYVILLE!”

Lapis winced, covering his ears with one hoof, then frowned as he recognized the voice. Bon Bon looked over at him, her ears tucked back even as she cocked an eyebrow. “Hey,” she began, “you think that’s-”

“WE HAVE GRACED YOUR TINY VILLAGE WITH OUR PRESENCE, SO THAT YOU MIGHT BEHOLD THE REAL PRINCESS OF THE NIGHT!” the voice added, and Bon Bon’s ears flattened themselves against the back of her head at the noise.

“-Luna?” Bon Bon finished.

“A CREATURE OF NIGHTMARES NO LONGER…”

Lapis winced again. “Yeah, I think it might be.”

Bon Bon stood up, starting for the door. “Well then, we’d better- AAAH!”

Suddenly, Bon Bon reared and fell on her rump. She scrambled back from the door, frantically swiping her front right hoof across the length of her front left leg. “Getitoffme, get it off!”

Lapis froze by her side, trying to see what was on her leg. “What? Get what off, what is it?!”

“SPIDER! GET IT!” Bon Bon screamed, and pointed with her hoof to an empty region of Lapis’ floor.

“…There’s not a spider there,” Lapis said, frowning and cocking an eyebrow. “Bon Bon, I think it’s gone.”

Bon Bon’s eyes were nearly bulging from their sockets, and she was still staring at the spot on the floor. “Oh, no. No, it’s still there.”

Princess Luna’s voice echoed outside. Lapis cocked an eyebrow, glanced at the empty spot on the floor, then back at Bon Bon. “…So, this is going to seem like a weird question, but did you eat any mushrooms recently?”

“I know it sounds crazy. I’m not crazy!” Bon Bon said, her voice shaking as she stared at the spot on the floor, pointing to it with a hoof. “Just… stomp right there, please.”

“Alright,” Lapis said, walking over to the spot on the floor. He raised his hoof, brought it down-

And felt something crunch beneath his hoof.

Lapis felt his eyes widening, felt his ears flopping back atop his head. “…Uh, Bon Bon?”

“Three years ago,” Bon Bon said, her voice still trembling. “A student at the Royal Magic Academy wanted to see whether normal creatures, if enchanted, would pass their enchantments on to their offspring. That… student, picked a spider, and tried to enchant it to glow, but they got it wrong. Instead, they turned that spider invisible.”

Lapis raised his hoof, slowly and carefully peering underneath it. Ground into the floorboards was a dark smear, about two inches long.

“That student was right,” Bon Bon said, her voice haunted. “The spider laid eggs. And those eggs hatched into hundreds of invisible spiders. We- we thought we found them all, but-”

Bon Bon’s voice broke. “Lapis, I think we missed one.”

Lapis glanced at his own hoof, then looked back at Bon Bon. “Do you think it laid eggs?”

The look on Bon Bon’s face was nothing short of pure terror. “…You need to go to the library. You need to find a spell, a light spell, called Ghostly Gold Dust. And then, you need to come back here and spray down every, last, inch of this house. Until you’ve found all the spiders, and squished all of them.”

“…I’m getting you out of here first,” Lapis said, starting toward Bon Bon.

“NO!” Bon Bon screeched. She started to scramble backward again, but then froze in place. “No! No. I’m staying here.”

“What?” Lapis asked, incredulous. “Bon Bon, this is where we found the spider!”

“You think they’re just in your house?!” Bon Bon hissed, her ears flat against her head, her eyes bulging from their sockets. “Lapis, they have to be all over Ponyville by now! If I go out there, who knows how many I’ll run into, but as long as I stay still, then- then I’ll be able to pay attention. To notice, if any more of them try to climb on me. You go the library, you make sure it’s safe here, and then- then we’ll figure out what to do next.”

“Right,” Lapis said, taking a deep breath. “Okay. When I see Lyra, I’ll send her this way. You sure you’ll be alright in here?”

“No,” Bon Bon said, and then she swallowed and met Lapis’ gaze, locking a mask of determination over top of her obvious terror. “But go anyway. And please, please hurry.”

Lapis hesitated, then nodded and rushed out the door, turning toward the Golden Oak Library and setting off at a gallop.

In the distance, lightning crackled and ponies screamed. Lapis winced as he continued galloping. Yeah, tonight’s not a great night for invisible spiders. Luna, if you keep pulling shit like that, ponies are going to think you haven’t recover-

An image of Luna having a conversation with Twilight flashed through Lapis’ head, and he resisted the urge to facehoof as he approached an intersection. Right, now I remember which episode this is. Well, at least it’s not the fate of Equestria on my shoulders this time, plus I know Luna should be distracted for the night. - oop, I need to go straight here, gotta go around the Golden Oak.

Lapis started to correct his course away from the library - then stopped, rolling his eyes. …Wait, no, I’m going to the Golden Oak. Right. Lapis hung a left, then picked up planning again. Twilight should also be distracted, and Spike’s with her, so with any luck, I’ll have the whole library to myself. …I’m not just worrying about that out of habit, right?

Lapis cocked his head, still glancing around. I still shouldn’t get in contact with the protagonists? -Yeah, no, still avoiding contact. They know I exist and that I’m a repair-pony, but I definitely don’t want them getting more involved than that, or else the risk of odd questions goes way up.

The Golden Oak came into view, and Lapis slowed to a trot, taking the chance to catch his breath as he looked around. Streets are still empty… I guess everypony’s sidetracked by Luna? I probably won’t run into Lyra, but hopefully that means I won’t run into any of the Element Bearers, either-

“MY GOODNESS!” a lightly-accented voice exclaimed. “Why, you poor thing! Whatever happened to your costume?!”

Lapis paused, then turned his head to see who was speaking. A pale unicorn mare wearing a royal-blue Victorian-styled gown and a black-and-white theater mask was trotting in his direction, staring at him with wide eyes. Uh-oh. Now’s really not the time for interruptions, Bon Bon’s in danger. I’ve got to end this conversation and get in the library, now.

“…This is it, ma’am,” Lapis said, cocking an eyebrow. Then, putting on his best customer-service voice and his most formal level stare, he unleashed the firmest dismissal in his arsenal: “Anything else I can help you with?”

“…Ah,” the mare said, glancing away and laughing nervously. “I’m terribly sorry about that, dear, I assure you I meant no-”

She paused, cocking her head. “-Wait a moment. Lapis? Lapis Print, is that you?”

Lapis frowned. Do I know this pony, or have they heard of me? Unicorn mare, white coat, curled purple mane and tail-

“Oh,” Lapis said. Oh no, he thought. “Uh, hey. It’s Rarity, right?”

“Lapis!” Rarity announced, and though Lapis couldn’t see anything but her eyes, he could hear the unicorn’s smile on her voice. “My deepest apologies, I had no idea! Your… costume was very, er…. Thorough.”

“Practice makes perfect,” Lapis said. I hope. Got to get rid of you, but I can’t prompt any follow-up… what do I do?!

‘Practice makes perfect,’ Lapis had said.

‘PRACTICE MAKES PERFECT.’

Rarity could think of very few words that might have stoked greater pity within her heart. Suffice to say, she was glad to be wearing a mask - the sight of her jaw hanging open would have been most unseemly.

“You mean to say… you’ve worn this costume before?” Rarity was able to stammer, as she swept her gaze up and down the tissue wrapped around Lapis’ body. And, to her immediate horror, she began to pick up the details - the ‘bandages’ upon Lapis’ legs, torso, and neck, though severely disheveled, were wrapped around each other in a simple, bilateral criss-cross, supporting themselves with far too much systematic uniformity to be anything but practiced.

Truth be told, it wasn’t the worst mummy costume Rarity had seen, even if it was in desperate need of repair. The design was sound enough, but the choice of material was all wrong. Granted, Rarity would not have been totally authentic herself - linen was no easy thing to come by - but even wool would have sufficed! Any proper fabric, rather than whatever textured, semi-translucent tissue-

Wait. That isn’t tissue.

“Uh, yeah?” Lapis said, shrugging with one hoof and glancing off to the side. “C’mon, everypony goes as a toilet-paper mummy at least once… Rarity?”

Toilet… paper…?

“Uh, Rarity. You alright over there?”

“Auh,” Rarity said, and then the ground rushed up to meet her.

“…What?” Lapis muttered, looking at the unconscious unicorn. “Rarity? Hey, you alright?”

He looked around - and, to his concern, nopony was around. Hopefully she wakes up soon - did I do something? Her gown - oh, shit, do I need to rip her corset?!

Wait. What am I thinking, why would ponies wear corsets? Lapis shook his head. She’s probably just… stayed up too late, or something.

Lapis turned and tried the library door - and, to his relief, it swung open easily. He started toward it, then paused, looking back at Rarity.

She was still out cold - still breathing, which was good, but definitely still out cold. Yeah, I can’t just leave her out here.

Grimacing, Lapis ignited his horn - then slowly, carefully, wrapped his telekinetic grip around Rarity, and began to lift. The strain hit him at once, he could feel his field trying to buckle against the pressure of the other unicorn. But as long as there were no sudden movements - and as long as his sudden headache didn’t get too much worse - he could hold it.

Lapis levitated Rarity into the Golden Oak ahead of himself, dragged over a seating cushion from beside a shelf, and set Rarity down atop it. He winced at his new headache, then shook his head and hurried over to the section about magic. There, he skimmed a few titles and snatched up the most well-used book that seemed related to light magic.

He glanced over at Rarity, making sure she was still asleep. Then, he frantically flipped to the back of the book, checking for an index. There was none, so he flipped back to the front and started scanning pages as quickly as he could, looking for any sign of the spell he needed. Ghostly Gold Dust, Ghostly Gold Dust… c’mon, where are you?!

Lapis turned another page and spotted the sentence, To make a spray of glimmering light from your horn, the incantation for Ghostly Gold Dust is as follows. He lunged for the counter, grabbed a sheet of paper and a quill, and hastily scribbled down the incantation. After making sure his copy was correct, he clapped the book shut-

“Wha-?”

Oops.

There was a snap, of heavy sheets of paper meeting each other, and Rarity lurched upright. “Wha-?”

For a few seconds, Rarity wasn’t sure where she was - but, as she looked around and blinked the shadows from the corners of her eyes, she recognized the familiar bookshelves and oil lanterns of Twilight’s library. She was lying on her side atop one of the reading cushions, and somepony wrapped in strips of white paper was in there with her - standing by the counter, tucking a furled scroll into his saddlebags, and levitating a battered yellow book toward the shelves about magic.

Rarity stared at the pony for a moment, and then she remembered. “Oh! Lapis! Dreadfully sorry about that, I’ve been, ah, having these dizzy spells lately.”

“I would say ‘don’t worry about it,’ but, uh,” Lapis said. He glanced past her toward the library door, then met her gaze again. “…you might wanna get that checked. You were out for a solid minute or so, there.”

Rarity felt her eyes widening. “…Ah. Perhaps I’d best take a stroll down to Ponyville General, then?”

“Maybe not right now,” Lapis said. He glanced at the doorway again, but stayed rooted to the floor by the library counter. Focused on the door, and on me. Hesitant to approach either. He wants to leave, but I’m in the way, noted the part of Rarity’s mind that was trying not to remember Lapis’ costume.

“Not sure if you’ve heard, but Princess Luna’s showed up, and… she means well, but the town’s still freaking out a little,” Lapis said. “You might wanna stay put until it dies down.”

Rarity gasped. “Nightmare Moon!?” She clambered to her hooves - then, she staggered to the side, the room seeming to spin beneath her hooves.

“Whoa, you good?” Lapis said, from somewhere in the distance.

Rarity shook off the dizziness, then looked up to see that Lapis had started toward her, and was lowering a hoof back to the floor. Wide eyes, clearly paying close attention, still hesitant to approach. He’s concerned, but trying to conceal it. “Seriously, you just passed out,” he was saying. “You need to take it slow-”

“If Nightmare Moon’s returned, then I haven’t a moment to lose!” Rarity said, her mind already racing. “I need to find Twilight, and-”

“Not Nightmare Moon!” Lapis said, raising a hoof. Ear twitch toward the back of his head. Irritated, but trying to hide it. Is he irritated with himself, or me? “Princess Luna. She’s not possessed anymore, she’s just trying to re-introduce herself to society, set the record straight about… stuff. Twilight’s already working on it. You need to stay here and take it easy until tomorrow, and I-”

Lapis paused, his hoof drooping toward the floor. “Kind of… need to leave.” He glanced off to the side, his ears twitching again. “Uh. Urgent… uh, repair job. Getting worse every second I’m not working on it, so I need to get out of here for a while. Can I trust you to stay put and not make yourself pass out again?”

Obvious lie, genuine urgency. Struggling to come up with an excuse, desperate to follow through with it… but still insistent on my health.

And then, everything clicked neatly into place.

Rarity met the repair-pony’s wide, dark eyes, doing her best to sound slightly indignant. “Well, I expect I can manage for awhile, yes.”

“Alright,” Lapis said, igniting his horn and pushing open the library door. “Stay. I mean it. …And good luck.”

And then he was gone, out the door and down the road with a speed that almost matched that of a determined Pinkie Pie. The door swung itself closed soon afterward, with a sharp swiftness that nevertheless avoided slamming shut.

Rarity remained standing by the library door for a few moments, then settled herself down. Well, that was certainly thought-provoking. I had dismissed those dizzy spells as part of my artistic sensitivity, but perhaps I really should do something about them. And Lapis…

Out of habit, Rarity raised a hoof to her masked face, stifling a giggle that was already muffled. My goodness. All Pinkie’s effort and Twilight’s fuss, over a stallion who’s quite simply nervous around mares. Why, it’s a miracle the poor dear’s not as bad as Fluttershy!

Lapis burst back into his house to find Bon Bon sitting perfectly still in the middle of the living room, her eyes wide open and staring right at him.

“Found the spell,” he said, quickly shutting the door behind him and unfurling the scroll from his bag. “You alright over there?”

“All… over… me…” Bon Bon said, her voice somewhere between a hiss and a whimper. One of her eyelids briefly twitched, and Lapis suddenly realized - he had no way of telling whether that twitch was caused merely by stress, or by a spider on Bon Bon’s face.

He grimaced and turned back to the scroll. “Okay. I’ll start with you, then work through the rest of the house. Not much longer…”

Lapis pointed his horn at Bon Bon, took hold of his magic, and thought through the incantation. At once, he was overcome by a slight draining sensation - and, from the tip of his horn, there was a quick puff of glowing golden particles. Well, shit. I was hoping it’d be a constant spray. Doing the whole house in batches will mean a way higher chance of missing some.

He looked back up to see Bon Bon, who now looked remarkably like she’d fallen into a pile of glitter. To Lapis’ mingled relief and unease, the spell had worked - a few patches of golden dust were hovering less than an inch above Bon Bon’s coat, and one of them was moving even as Lapis watched.

Bon Bon’s eyes locked onto these at once, and Lapis hurriedly brushed them off. The second that Bon Bon was spider-free, she collapsed to the floor, tucking back her ears and shuddering with revulsion.

Lapis winced, then crouched down to put a hoof over Bon Bon’s shoulder. “Sorry I took so long,” he muttered.

“Staying here was a bad idea,” Bon Bon replied. “I was panicking. I should’ve- I just- UGH!”

Bon Bon banged her head against the floor, hard enough that Lapis winced. “It’s so stupid! All the things to be afraid of, and I get spiders?! These things aren’t even venomous! I should- I should just-”

She looked up, and her eyes fixed on something. Lapis followed her gaze to a patch of glitter that was wandering past her, in the general direction of his shop’s counter. Bon Bon’s mouth tightened, and she slowly, deliberately moved her hoof just over the spider. She took a deep breath in, and her hoof hung in the air for a second-

Then, Bon Bon groaned, pulling her hoof back and letting her head fall back to the floor. “Why?” she eventually asked. “Why can’t I just get over it? They’re dumb little bugs, they can’t even hurt me, and I just-”

She shivered again. “Urgh. …Sorry you have to see me like this.”

Lapis grinned, waving a hoof. “Don’t worry about it. My mom’s the same way about snakes. I think it’s something in our instincts- y’know, maybe a long time ago, before ponies could talk, venomous spiders were a common enough problem that we needed to be this afraid.”

Bon Bon’s mouth quirked upward, and she gave a quiet snort. “‘Before ponies could talk,’ huh? A-mare-ica must have some pretty different ideas about history.”

“Most likely,” Lapis said. “…Alright, you wanna try going outside? I can clear you a path to the door, make sure the porch is clear, then go back inside and deal with all the rest.”

Bon Bon nodded. “Yes. Please.”

Lapis smiled, then took a deep breath and levitated the scroll to his side.

It took three puffs to coat a strip of floor that led outside, Bon Bon scrambling into each patch of glitter-covered space as soon as Lapis had cast the spell. Making sure the porch was safe took longer - he found three spiders with the first coat of light, and when he made a second round, he found another spider in a spot he’d already sprayed.

As Lapis brought his hoof down on the bug, he felt a pinch on one of his back legs, just above the hoof. He winced, quickly brushing off his leg and stomping on the spider as soon as he felt it. “Hey, Bon Bon? You said they’re not venomous, right?”

Bon Bon’s eyes widened, and Lapis noticed that the dust on her face was slowly fading away. “One of them bit you?”

“Yeah,” Lapis said, looking back at his leg. “It doesn’t feel like it’s burning or anything.”

Bon Bon shivered again. “No, they can’t hurt you. Besides the invisibility thing, they’re normal garden spiders.”

Lapis shrugged, then gave the porch a few more puffs of glitter, just in case. “Alright, I think it’s safe out here.”

Bon Bon trotted outside, shutting the door behind her, then sat down and sighed in relief. “Thanks. …If I see Lyra passing by, I’ll flag her down.”

Lapis nodded, then moved to the door. “Alright. I’m going back in, wish me luck.”

“Thank you,” Bon Bon said, and Lapis slipped inside the house.

The first thing he noticed was that none of the spiders he’d already sprayed were visible anymore. Lapis was pretty sure that the glitter he’d already applied hadn’t worn off yet, judging by the twinkling Bon-Bon-shaped outline on his wall. That means the spiders have probably hidden somewhere. Can’t really blame them, but I can’t have them in my house, either.

“Welp,” Lapis muttered, walking behind his counter and unfurling the scroll. “Guess I’d better get started. Okay, you creepy little crawlies, you have until I find you to start paying rent.”

“We hope thou dost not mean us,” said a voice next to Lapis’ ear.

Lapis flinched, reflexively turning toward the closet door - and then he recognized the voice. Oh, okay, she’s here.

Now. Right now. In person, for the first time I’ve ever communicated with her-

Alright, just play it cool. Nothing’s wrong, and we’re going to keep it that way. Ready? Go.

“Not so much, Your Grace,” Lapis said, steeling his nerves as he turned toward Princess Luna. “This is going to sound a little strange, but I was talking to the invisible spiders.”

The Princess of the Night was standing just behind Lapis’ counter, her head lowered as if she were worried her horn would get stuck in his rafters. Her indigo-smoky mane was flowing in the air, her brow was furrowed, and her face looked distinctly concerned as she met Lapis’ gaze. “…We beg thy pardon?”

“The invisible spiders,” Lapis repeated - then, upon seeing the worry only growing on Luna’s face, he raised a hoof. “Hang on, I’ll show you.”

Lapis pointed his horn at the nearest crevice and cast the Gold-Dust spell. Luckily, his guess had been good, and his magical glitter revealed the outline of one of the spiders.

“Hm,” Luna said, watching the patch of twinkling gold skitter across the ceiling. “…We admit, this is not a form of ‘fun’ we’d expected to find tonight.”

“Not my idea of a good time either, Your Grace,” Lapis replied, rolling up the scroll and using it to whack the newly-revealed spider. “I’m not sure how or when they got into my house, but they’ve infested the place. They bite, too - they’re not venomous or anything, but you might wanna wait outside until I’ve cleared them all out.”

Luna shook her head, igniting her horn. “Nay. ‘Twould take too long, and we have much to discuss.” Her horn flared, and a second later, a pulse of blue-green something washed over the inside of Lapis’ house. There was a sound like a roll of bubble wrap being wrung out, and a dozen or so dark splotches appeared on the walls, ceiling, and floor of Lapis’ living room.

“…Ah,” Luna said, her eyes widening. “Thou didst not exaggerate thine infestation. Our apologies for the mess.”

“…It’s alright,” Lapis said, tearing his eyes away from his newly-stained rug. “What spell was that, anyway?”

“Something we thought of before our banishment,” Luna replied, stepping out from around the counter and toward Lapis’ table. “An especially intrusive house of nobility had found a way to scry through the senses of enchanted houseflies, and it soon became our task to remove their flies from the walls.”

It was at this point that Lapis suddenly remembered Bon Bon, and how exhausted she’d looked as she’d sat down on his porch.

“But let us set that aside,” Luna began.

“Uh, wait,” Lapis found himself saying, raising a hoof. “Sorry to ask, but I’ve got a friend who’s deathly afraid of spiders, and this whole invisible infestation thing might seriously mess her up for awhile. Do you have the range on that spell to sweep her house, too?”

Luna blinked, then smiled. “Of course! In truth, we could easily clear all Ponyville of the things!”

…All of Ponyville?! “Hang on,” Lapis began, but Luna had already ignited her horn.

A second later, everything that Lapis could see briefly pulsed with a barely-noticable blue-green tinge, and another, smaller burst of popping noises echoed across Ponyville. It was shortly followed by several high shrieks, and Lapis distinctly heard a distant voice shouting a single word - ‘tub,’ or maybe ‘rub.’

Luna released a satisfied sigh, then beamed at Lapis for a moment. “Many thanks for the chance to be of service, to thy friends and to Equestria. At any rate, we invited thee to the Grand Galloping Gala, and we mean to clarify our intentions toward thee.”

Lapis nodded, slowly. Keep. Calm. “Alright, Your Grace. Should I sit down, or…?”

“If thou wishest it,” Luna replied, seating herself on the rug beside the table. “…Though, we must insist against thy addressing us as ‘Your Grace.’ ‘Tis a title of the duchy, not those ponies of our own rank.”

Whoops. Lapis grimaced, then carefully walked over to the table and took a seat. Even with Luna sitting on the floor, and himself atop a stool, Lapis still had to look up to meet her gaze - though, not as much as he’d had to look up to Celestia. “Sorry, I had no idea. Would ‘Your Majesty’ or ‘Your Highness’ be better?”

Lapis hadn’t known it was possible to snort politely, not until after Luna had done it. “‘Your Highness’ shall suffice,” she said. “And of course all is forgiven. We would offer thee a book of manners, had all those we studied not rotted to pulp in centuries past.”

A frown briefly tugged at the corners of Luna’s mouth, but then she shook her head slightly and turned her gaze back to Lapis, her blue-green eyes as deep as the ocean. “But this too, we must set aside. Concerning thy attendance at the Gala, and our expectations for thee…”

Lapis held his breath.

“…Thou shouldst have little to do, save attend the festivities,” Luna said, one of her eyebrows inching up slightly. “Though ‘twas us who sent thy ticket, such was done at Celestia’s behest. She wishes to speak with thee then, regarding her plans for thy tutorship.”

Ask about the tutorship now, or you’ll be going into the Gala blind, Lapis thought. “About that, Your Highness,” was all he managed to say - the rest of the question tried to crawl back down his throat as Princess Luna blinked in surprise.

Lapis grimaced, then forced the words back up and out. “My tutorship, I mean. Do you think Princess Celestia will try to make me your student?”

For a full count of three, Luna did not respond, and Lapis felt his pulse speeding up-

-Then Luna turned her head and snorted again, and this time it was not a polite noise. When she faced Lapis again, it was with a smirk on her face. “Should she try such a thing… we have a request to make of thee, shouldst thou be willing to hear it.”

Lapis carefully nodded, and Luna kept speaking. “Should Celestia even begin overtures toward such an arrangement, we shall meet thy gaze, then face Celestia and say, ‘Remember Dewy Starglow.’ Might we ask thee to say the same, as we say it? In so doing, we hope to make a lasting impression on our sister’s tendencies to scheming.”

Lapis nodded again, feeling a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth, and Luna breathed a slight sigh of relief. “Excellent. And we applaud thy courage in joining league with us, Lapis. We had feared thy earlier directness with us had fled thee.”

“Sorry,” Lapis said. “We’d been- wait. I’d been worrying about the tutorship situation for awhile, and meeting you face-to-face is pretty different from writing to you with the Index.”

Luna nodded. “Indeed. ‘Tis the very reason our sister arranges meetings with the noble houses; reminding them of who writes the laws does much to keep them in line. …Alas, it likewise dissuades casual conversation,” Luna added, glancing out Lapis’ window as she spoke. “‘Tis… lucky that Celestia’s student is here tonight. Without her prompting, we suspect nopony at all would yet have spoken with us this ‘Nightmare Night.’ In honesty, ‘tis lucky indeed she hast dissuaded us from cancelling the holiday entirely,” Luna finished, chuckling.

“Yeah,” Lapis said, looking back outside again. “Did your sister really not warn you about tonight?”

“Nay, she likely told us of it,” Luna muttered, then looked down at the table, releasing a slow breath through her nose. “…We admit, we have had much on our mind of late. All this business with ballooning and trains has thrown us for something of a loop, to say nothing of how numerous our subjects have become in our absence. Buildings have grown taller, cities wider, ponies more long-lived, and speech less intricate yet more complex at once. Not to mention the matter of our own diminished height,” Luna added, looking herself over.

Lapis found himself nodding. “Yeah. It’s, uh, it’s a lot to get used to. I was honestly shocked by how much ponies talk to each other- uh, never mind.”

Luna looked up, a look of faint surprise crossing her own face - then, she suppressed a quick chuckle, and nodded. “Nay, there is merit to thy words. Our apologies, Lapis, we had forgotten thine own distant origins. Which reminds us…”

Luna hesitated, staring out the window for a moment, then turned to face Lapis. “…Provided thou hast the proper equipment, we are willing to accompany thee on thy next expedition to our former castle. We are unsure what thou might hope to find, but if finding it should lessen thy fears, ‘tis the least we can do to aid thee in looking.”

Lapis felt his eyes widening. “Wait, really? Oh. Wow. Thanks, Your Highness. Do you mind if I ask Zecora whether she’ll come along?”

“The Zebrican shaman?” Luna asked, after a moment’s consideration. “Go ahead. From what we have seen, her aid would be most welcome. And we are curious to ply her about the growth of shamanic traditions since our banishment-”

Somepony knocked on Lapis’ door, and Luna looked up. “-But I suppose we must save the details for later,” she finished, igniting her horn. “We would hate to draw more attention upon thee than thou might desire, by associating thee with ourselves. Write us the evening before thy expedition, and we shall arrive at the Castle by mid-morning.”

Lapis blinked, as the Princess’ horn slowly began to hum with magic. Wait, what? Why’s she hiding that she visited me? “Leaving already? I can tell them to wait outside for awhile, whoever they are.”

A small, sad smile surfaced on Luna’s face, like a bubble rising from dark water. “The Element of Magic has shown us how to find purpose in the fears we now inspire. Nonetheless, we still mourn at seeing our face in nightmares… ‘twould be our shame to place thy face beside our own, there. Fare thee well, and we shall see thee at the Castle.”

And, before Lapis could object, she was gone in a flash of light.

“…Well, shit,” Lapis muttered, trying to ignore the twinge of discomfort in his chest.

The knock at the door came again. Hurrying to open it, he found Lyra and Bon Bon waiting outside.

“Are the spiders gone?” Bon Bon asked.

“Also, hey, Lapis,” Lyra said, smiling awkwardly over Bon Bon’s shoulder. “Sorry I didn’t get here sooner, I had no idea there was a spider situation going on.”

“Don’t worry, we took care of it,” Lapis said, nodding at the spider guts that now polka-dotted his living room. “Also, uh. Somepony else was just here, I’ll tell you about it inside.”

“Oh,” Lyra said, her eyes growing wide as she looked over the spider guts. “Oh, wow. Okay, Bon Bon, are you sure you wanna go in?”

“Yes,” Bon Bon huffed, rolling her eyes and pointedly crossing over the threshold. “As long as they’re not moving, I’m fine.”

Bon Bon still gave the splotches of spider guts a wide berth as she and Lyra stepped into the building, Lyra pulling the door shut behind herself. “…So,” Lyra asked, grinning. “How’d the talk with Luna go?”

“She’s absolutely positive that she isn’t my tutor,” Lapis replied, cutting the air with his hoof. “As in, if Celestia tries to make her any such thing, Luna’s given me specific instructions about how we’re going to shoot her down. Metaphorically,” Lapis added, upon seeing Bon Bon’s raised eyebrow.

“That wasn’t what I was worried about,” Bon Bon replied. “Did either of you ever figure out where all those spiders came from?”

“Not so much, no,” Lapis said. “But, I did get her to clear all the invisible spiders out of Ponyville. That’s why everything went blue for a second, a little earlier.”

Lyra blinked in surprise, then beamed at Lapis, while Bon Bon shut her eyes and released a quiet sigh. “Oh, thank Celestia,” Bon Bon muttered. “…Or Luna, I mean.”

“No worries, I’ll relay the message,” Lapis said, and then suddenly realized that he wasn’t sure how to continue the conversation. On the one hand, he had several questions: where had the spiders come from, why had they gathered in his house, how had they not revealed themselves before today, and so on. On the other hand… neither Lyra nor Bon Bon were likely to have the answers, and Lapis felt like maybe he should try distracting Bon Bon, just in case that would reduce the evening’s trauma. So, what am I supposed to do?

…I could explain what the word ‘fuck’ means. Bon Bon’s pointed it out a couple of times. It’s not the best idea, but it’s out-of-the-blue enough, it just might work.

“So, uh,” Lapis began. “Moving on from all that-”

Almost immediately, three quick taps echoed from Lapis’ front door. Bon Bon, Lyra, and Lapis all looked up, and Lapis felt his gut twist as the possibilities started rolling through his head: It could be Rarity, checking in after what happened earlier. Or Twilight, trying to figure out what spell Luna cast. Or Applejack-

A distinctly annoyed trilling coo sounded from the other side of the door, and Lapis slumped forward in relief, igniting his horn. He pulled the door open, letting Nikki flutter into the room, then shut the door behind her. “Hey, Nikki. Sorry about that, it’s been… uh, it’s been a weird night.”

Nikki perched atop the counter, one of her brows creeping up as she took in the carnage. Slowly, she nodded.

“Ooh, wait, hang on,” Lyra said, perking up. “Hey, Nikki? You wouldn’t happen to know where all these invisible spiders came from, would you?”

At that moment, Lapis saw an expression on Nikki’s face that he’d never seen before: a queasy sort of frown, halfway between a grimace and a scowl. Nikki nodded, then gestured with a wing toward Lapis’ closet.

Lapis, Lyra, and Bon Bon exchanged wary looks, then Lapis got up. “I’ll check it out,” he said, heading toward the closet. “You two stay here. Nikki, would you mind coming with?”

“Be careful in there,” Bon Bon called, as Nikki landed atop Lapis’ head. Lapis pulled open the door to the closet, and saw that the attic hatch was open - and, more importantly, that several strands of gleaming spider silk were trailing down from the opening.

A few seconds later, Lapis had lit his horn, pulled down the ladder, and climbed almost through the hatch. Taking a deep breath, he raised his head into the attic and took it all in.

If his living room was bad, the attic was worse. What pieces of the wall that Lapis could see, in between the hundreds of criss-crossing silk strands, were very nearly painted with spider guts. I’ll have to come up here with a bucket of water and some rags tomorrow, or else… well, I don’t know what’ll happen if I let all this rot, but I’d rather not find out.

“The spiders definitely came from in here,” Lapis muttered, glancing down at the strands of silk that connected the hatch to the closet floor. “And I can guess how they got out. Question is, how did they get into my attic to begin with? The last time I was up here was just after I got out of Ponyville General… except I know I shut this hatch behind me when I climbed out…”

Nikki fluttered down off Lapis’ head, landing just in front of him on the attic floor. That queasy frown was back on her face, and this time, Lapis recognized it as guilt. She gestured with a wing toward the attic hatch, then at herself.

“You opened the attic?” Lapis asked, cocking his head. “First off, color me impressed. Second, why'd you - oh, wait. Bird season. Right. You know you can just stay in my living room, like you’ve been doing?”

Nikki shrugged, still grimacing. She pointed at herself, with a single feather of her wing, and nodded - then she raised another feather on her wing, then another, and another, before shrugging again.

“‘One pigeon yes, more than one pigeon not so much’?” Lapis guessed. “…Wait a second. You’re trying to look out for your pigeon buddies, aren’t you?”

Nikki scowled. Then, begrudgingly, she nodded.

Lapis sighed, looking down so that Nikki wouldn’t see his grin. “Tell you what. We’ll clean this place up tomorrow, and then I’ll see if I can figure something out,” he said. Then, he climbed back down the ladder.

Author's Note

Patch Notes (Luna-Grade Bugfix Edition):

(photojoe): In C’mon Over Now, Ya Hear?, a key character’s emoting sequence wound up calling the wrong animation, causing the character to frown as normal, and also begin rowing, on dry land, midair, during an otherwise normal conversation. This has now been fixed; we are now attempting to determine why the animations for a crew-rowing minigame were on file in the first place.
(zanec): In The Pinkening, Twilight experiences some kind of animation oddity that looks a lot like rubberbanding. After much fiddling around with various parts of the engine, we eventually determined that some bright spark in animation had decided not to call in for the day despite having a 102-degree (Fahrenheit) fever, and had made numerous mistakes over the course of that day (of which a mis-configured animation was the least). Let this be a lesson to all of you: you have sick days for a reason. Use them.
(kek lel): In Lesson One, one of the text generators malfunctioned, causing the word “FUCKING” to be mis-spelled as “FUCKIGN”. However, the noter of the typo has requested that we leave the typo in, on the basis of its being funnier this way. We agree, and as such are leaving it as-is.
(orp): Also in Lesson One, a similar mis-configuration error to that in The Pinkening may be seen in a transitory camera pan. The animator responsible for The Pinkening’s error has so far denied any involvement.
(photojoe): In Cider Pressure, two errors were noted by the same observer. One was a simple mis-timed perception check, which was easily fixed. The second, however, appeared to be a complete inversion of the usual RNG governing luck-based mechanics. This led to something of a panic in the balancing crew, as whatever had gone wrong here could prove disastrous if allowed to recur. Fortunately, the problem turned out to be a matter of poor framing rather than malfunctioning luck: someone had left it unclear who was benefiting from Lyra’s adeptness at tinder-gathering. Specification added, problem hopefully fixed.

And with that: Hello again, everypony! I know it's been a while since last we spoke, but here I am - one unplanned year's hiatus and some life events later, but still kickin'.

I did make an announcement on my blog page about where I went, what happened, etc., but I also formatted it like a snippet and made it, like, 900 words long, so here's the TL;DR: If you go back to college, keep track of your deadlines, and make sure you've got other folks around to help keep you from burning out... lest ye face THE CONSEQUENCES.

I'm clear of academia now, and I've got a solid 8-to-5 retail job; so with any luck, I should be able to get back into the swing of things here. That said, I'm still not back at my usual writing pace yet, so I won't make any promises regarding upload dates - I'll just keep on writing, and post new chapters as I finish them.

Finally, I've been rereading my comments, and, like... guys, you're the best. I really am genuinely sorry I made so many of you worry I was dead, I honestly should've been trying to keep in touch - both with you folks, and just in general. Reading through your comments, and your messages, really helped me work up the nerve to get things started again. Thank you, all of you. It's an honor and a pleasure to tell you this story, and I look forward to showing you what happens next - both in the distant future, and in the next one. 'Till then!

The Summer Sun Celebration, Part 1

It was the day of the Summer Sun Celebration, and an exhausted-looking unicorn with a pair of saddlebags slung over his back was walking down the main road of Ponyville, his eyes sweeping the street and rooftops as if he were looking for something.

Besides his fatigue, there wasn’t anything special about this unicorn. His coat was a creamy parchment-white, and his mane and tail, which were both roughly cut to average length, were dark blue. His mane, which stopped just above his brown eyes, had a thin, clear gray streak, but he wasn’t old by any stretch - in fact, he looked pretty young, twenty years at most. His brown canvas saddlebags half-covered his Cutie Mark, which was a small, four-pointed white star on a clay tablet, a crack in the tablet’s side disappearing beneath the spark.

The unicorn looked as if he had stayed up all night. His lower eyelids were dark and swollen, and a few strands of his mane had come loose. He still seemed alert enough, though, his ears up and forward as he scanned the rooftops.

He stopped as he spotted something on the side of a nearby roof, and a coat of magic wrapped around his horn - his magic was the same light-brown color as his eyes, somewhere between hot cocoa and coffee with cream. A single, cracked shingle popped off the rooftop, then floated down until it was a couple feet away from the unicorn’s face. The unicorn shut his eyes, and the spark on his Cutie Mark glowed a pale blue - then, a flash of light engulfed the shingle.

When the light cleared, the crack in the shingle was gone. The unicorn opened his eyes and looked the shingle over - then grinned, and levitated it back into its place on the rooftop. The unicorn scrutinized it, satisfied, but he still seemed uneasy as he kept inspecting his surroundings.

A pigeon fluttered down from the rooftop, perching on the unicorn’s back and covering a yawn with one of its wings. The unicorn looked back, and was only briefly surprised to see the bird.

“Hey, Nikki. Late riser, huh?” he chuckled. “Can’t say I blame you.”

The pigeon rolled her eyes, then turned and started taking in some of the decorations for the Summer Sun Celebration. So far, there wasn’t much - an extra-fancy flower basket here, a pennant hung on a door there, the occasional sign bearing holiday greetings.
The other citizens were definitely more impressive than the decor. None of them were really dressed up - though, most of their manes and tails looked a little neater than usual, and one or two of the ponies were wearing small ornaments like ribbons or jewelry. All of them, regardless of getups, were busy - most were in pairs or groups of three, trucking supplies towards the Town Hall, where they’d end up staying awake all night to watch Princess Celestia raise the sun. Most of them were chatting as they went, excitement plain in their voices.
One or two ponies, though, were getting a head start on the commercial side of the festival, setting up little market stands with striped awnings on the sides of the road. The unicorn glanced down the rows, then paused when he saw an Earth-pony mare with a brown coat and a green-and-yellow mane placing a bag full of seeds on one of the counters.

“Excuse me, miss,” the unicorn called out, trotting over. The mare looked up, then set another bag of sunflower seeds down on the counter, the seeds shifting over each other with a dry rustle.

“Sorry to bother you,” the unicorn said. “Are you selling yet, or do I have to come back later?”

The mare shrugged. “Depends on whether I’ve unpacked what’cha wanna buy. I’ve got just sunflower seeds, just wheat, just oats, and…”

She blinked, recognition lighting her eyes. “…Say, aren’t you the new repair-pony in town?”

“Huh? Oh, yeah, that’s me,” the unicorn said. “Lapis Print, but please just call me Lapis.”

“Nice to meet you! My name’s Yellow Petal,” the mare replied, smiling. She looked over Lapis’ shoulder, saw the pigeon perched there, and her smile widened. “So, anyway, those are my big bags, but I’ve also unpacked a few little snack-bags with mixes of oats, wheat, and sunflower seeds.”

Lapis grinned. “One of the little bags sounds perfect. How much?”

“Five bits.”

“Done.” Lapis floated five small golden coins up onto the counter, and Yellow Petal slid them out of sight before ducking down to grab one of the bags. Lapis, meanwhile, looked back at the pigeon, and saw that she was gaping up at him.

“Jeez, Nikki, what’s with the look?” Lapis said, chuckling. “What, you thought I was kidding? I said you’d earned a bag of birdseed, and I meant it. Just don’t get any shells in my coat, and…”

The unicorn trailed off as he noticed something approaching the road from above. Huh, he thought. UFO coming in. Looks like a… golden chariot, maybe?

Lapis’ eyes widened as the chariot got closer, and he was able to distinguish two winged figures ahead of the vehicle’s bulk. Those are pegasi… armored pegasi. Their armor was in a vaguely-Roman style, and was the same golden color as the chariot. Guards, maybe?

And if those are guards, then… wouldn’t it be the Princess in that chariot?

“Huh.” Lapis turned around, and saw that Yellow Petal had popped up from behind the counter. “Well, I don’t think it’s the princess. It might be one of her officials, though.”

“Really? How come?” Lapis asked, levitating the small bag of seeds off the counter and onto his back.

The merchant chuckled. “This’ll be your first time seeing the Princess, huh?”

“Uh, maybe.” Lapis grinned, his ears tucking back as he rubbed the back of his neck.

Yellow Print nodded. “Don’t worry about it. Trust me, she’s pretty hard to miss. My guess is, that’s some organizer-pony, come to make sure the Mayor knows what she’s doing.”

“Yeah, that makes sense,” Lapis said, turning to watch the carriage. That look of unease was back on his face, and it was intensifying by the second. This festival, the chariot… they mean something important, but what? “Uh, thanks for the seeds, Yellow Petal. And happy Summer Sun Celebration!”

“You too!” the merchant called, as Lapis walked a few buildings down the road. He kept his eyes on the chariot, eventually stopping under the shade of an awning. The pigeon on his back, Nikki, wasted no time pulling open the bag of birdseed and stuffing her beak, her expression blissful as she crunched away at one of the sunflower seeds.

Lapis, meanwhile, was laser-focused on the chariot as it came in for a landing, his eyes narrowed, his ears forward as he strained to learn anything about the chariot’s occupants.

“…I am her student, and I’ll do my royal duty,” a mare’s voice was saying. “But the fate of Equestria does not rest on me making friends.”

The carriage touched down with only a tiny bump. A second or two later, a lavender unicorn with a purple mane walked into view, turning to address the drivers. “Thank you, sirs.”

Lapis stared for a second, then leaned back and relaxed as he recognized the purple unicorn. Oh, it’s Purple McBookface, he thought. Right. She arrives like this during… the first episode, right?

He grinned as the details came flooding back. Yeah, and then she meets the rest of the protagonists while checking on the town, and then the princess’ evil twin sister shows up or something, and…

…Wait a minute.

Lapis froze as several puzzle pieces fell into place at once. I showed up… before the show started. I showed up before the show’s plot-lines happened, and that means…

“Shit,” Lapis whispered, a look of barely-contained panic on his face.

The purple unicorn, whatever her name was, had started walking away from the chariot, accompanied by her lizard-thing sidekick. Baby dragon, maybe? His name is Stick or Poke or something, I think. The baby dragon was talking, leading the other unicorn towards a bubblegum-pink pony with a large, puffy mane. “…Come on, Twilight, just try!”

“Twilight… guess we have a name for her,” Lapis muttered, prompting Nikki to pull her head out of the bag of birdseed, blinking a couple of shells off her eyes. Then Lapis noticed who Twilight was talking to, and his eyes shot wide open.

Pinkie Pie, Lapis thought, slowly backing towards the nearest alley. Don’t see me, don’t see me…

“Uh…” Twilight said to Pinkie, her ears tucking back nervously. “Hello?”

Pinkie glanced over Twilight’s shoulder, and her eyes met Lapis’.

Uh-oh.

The pink pony gasped comically, jumping three feet clear into the air, shock on her face - then, midair, she launched towards Lapis in a pink blur, halving the distance between them at a terrifying pace.

Shit! Lapis grabbed Nikki’s bag of seeds with his magic, sprinting into the alley, Nikki letting out a surprised coo as she was brought along for the ride. He rounded the corner of a house, and wasted precious seconds fumbling for something in his saddlebags. Bits, spare request form, book, c’mon where is it?!

Lapis yanked something - a full face-mask with eyeholes, that had a picture of a barrel crudely drawn on it - out of his bag and over his face. He straightened up and stood stock-still, sucking in a deep breath and holding it just as Pinkie rounded the corner.

Don’t… move… Lapis thought, silently praying that Nikki got the same idea. Pinkie Pie stared around whoever’s-backyard-this-was in confusion, looking over a trash bin, a recycling bin, Lapis, and a rain barrel with the same determined squint. She looked back -

Oh no.

at the trash can, then approached it with slow, deadly silent steps - before yanking the lid off with one hoof. “Ah-ha!” she squeaked.

A raccoon poked its head out of the bin, rubbing its eyes and chittering in confusion. Pinkie blinked and pulled her head back in surprise, then smiled awkwardly and lowered the lid back onto the bin. She let out a small, disappointed sigh, then glanced around the yard again, her gaze sweeping over Lapis as if he really were a barrel, before finally settling on the middle distance.

“I’ll find you, new pony,” Pinkie said, her tone serious. “I’ll find you…”

She frowned. “Huh. New pony. Hmm…” She scrunched her face in thought for a moment, scratching her chin with one hoof - then gasped again, before disappearing in a bubblegum-pink blur, Lapis’ mane ruffling in the wind as she shot past him.

Five seconds passed. Ten. Twenty.

…She has to know, Lapis thought. There’s no way. She’s messing with me. She has to be.

“You know what?” he muttered, as he took the mask off and put it back in the bag. “As long as it works, I don’t care. You alright back there, Nikki… Nikki?”

Nikki’s beak had dropped, and she was staring at the space where Pinkie had been with a mixture of disgust and disbelief. As Lapis watched, Nikki made a helpless gesture towards the space, then at the mask inside Lapis’ saddlebag, then back towards where the pony had been, until finally she face-planted into the bag of birdseed.

A few seconds passed, and then Lapis grinned as he heard the crunching of birdseed from somewhere near Nikki’s face. Yep, she’s fine. Wish I could say the same…

Lapis’ grin faded as he remembered his earlier realization, what he’d put together as soon as he’d realized what episode he was in. He could hear himself asking Mayor Mare how the position of repair-pony had come open, could hear parts of her response echoing in his ears…

“I’m sure you’ve heard the rumors, that Ponyville is a bit of a ‘trouble magnet…’ It has been pretty quiet for the last five years…”

The quiet hadn’t been because the show had started. It had been because the show hadn’t started. Yet.

Oh, and also, the Princess’ evil twin sister was on the way. That’s important. Should probably panic about that first.

About ten seconds of silent panic later, Lapis took a deep breath, put on his business face, and marched back onto the main street. Pinkie was nowhere in sight, so he headed toward his favorite restaurant in town. He hadn’t seen any of the show’s six protagonists there yet, and avoiding them was second-highest priority.

First priority, right now, was a cup of coffee. Lapis might’ve been riding an adrenaline high right then, but he knew he’d be dead on his feet - uh, hooves - as soon as it wore off. So, when he reached a triangular building at an intersection, he wasted no time hurrying inside, whisking the still-faceplanting pigeon on his back through the door with him.

The Corner Cafe, which the Mayor had previously insisted was “not the same place as the Cafe Hay,” was a cozy little brick-and-mortar building that looked like a Waffle House and smelled like a fresh pot of coffee. Not just any coffee, either - the good stuff, fresh-ground and right out of the pot.

“Got any empty tables?” Lapis started to ask the waitress, but before he could finish he heard a voice calling his name. “Hey, Lapis! Over here!”

He looked over and saw an earth-pony waving him down from inside a booth. She had a pale, creamy-yellow coat - almost like his, now that he thought about it - and a curly mane and tail which were half pink and half navy blue.

“You know what, never mind,” Lapis told the waitress, and trotted towards the booth. “Hey, Bon Bon, how’s it going?”

“It’s going, that’s for sure,” Bon Bon muttered. “I haven’t even opened the candy shop yet, and half the town’s knocked on my door already!”

The other pony in the booth, who Lapis hadn’t noticed previously, giggled and piped up. “Maybe if you stopped giving them sample bags, they’d stop knocking?” This pony was a unicorn, and she had a mint-green coat with a white-striped mane that vaguely reminded Lapis of toothpaste.

Bon Bon scoffed and rolled her eyes, but there was a hint of a smile at the corners of her mouth. “It’s called customer retention, Lyra. Just because I don’t want customers yet doesn’t mean I don’t want them at all. Oh, Lapis, this is my friend, Lyra Heartstrings. Lyra, this is Lapis Print, the town’s new repair-pony.”

“Hi!” Lyra chirped, scooting further down on the bench. “Nice to meet you!”

“Hey, nice to meet you too,” Lapis replied, smiling and taking the seat, Nikki landing on the table with her now-empty bag of birdseed.

Lyra’s eyes widened as she watched Lapis get into position. “Oh, hey, I thought I was the only pony in Ponyville who sat that way!”

Lapis blinked. “What?”

“On your rump, with your back hooves sticking out like logs,” Bon Bon said, cocking an eyebrow. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen anypony but Lyra sitting that way before, either. Doesn’t your back hurt after a while?”

“Not usually, no,” Lapis said, frowning and looking over Bon Bon. Now that he paid attention, he could see that she was sitting like a dog, with her front hooves on the seat in front of her tucked-in back hooves - meanwhile, Lapis and Lyra were seated like humans. “Well, not unless I’m like this for more than two hours. What’ve you been up to, Lyra?”

“Well, I’ve mostly been tuning my lyre.”

“For three hours,” Bon Bon said.

“Well, sometimes that’s how long it takes,” Lyra said. “I’ve also been helping Bon Bon with last-minute stocking-up. I helped her make enough drizzle for five hundred peppermints!”

“And I’m going to need every last bit of it, too,” Bon Bon said, grinning. “How about you, Lapis?”

“Mostly, I’ve just been wandering around and fixing anything that breaks,” Lapis said. “Although, I also bought my little friend here a bag of seeds, since she was able to help me figure some stuff out earlier.”

Nikki lightly cuffed Lapis with her wing, rolling her eyes and smirking. Lyra, meanwhile, seemed to have only just noticed that there was a pigeon on the table. “Oh, I didn’t know you could talk to animals! I’ll have to look for you the next time I can’t find Fluttershy!”

“I’m pretty sure any of you could talk to animals,” Lapis said, grinning. “Just use the same words you use normally.”

“What she means is, she didn’t know you could understand the pigeon,” Bon Bon replied. “What’s her name?”

“Well, I’ve been calling her Nikki,” Lapis said, “and I can’t actually understand most of what she’s saying, but she’s been nice enough to hang around anyway. …Who’s Fluttershy, though? Can she understand animals or something?”

“Oh, yeah, she’s Ponyville’s animal expert,” Lyra said. “She’s amazing! Kinda shy, but amazing. I hear she’s getting a choir of birds to sing for the Summer Sun Celebration!”

“She is?” Lapis frowned, then his eyes widened as he remembered. “Oh, wait. Is she a pegasus, who hangs around with a bunny-rabbit? Kind of canary-yellow, long pink mane and tail?”

Bon Bon nodded. “That’s her. You’ve seen her around? I’m surprised, she usually avoids stallions.”

“I think I saw her once in the market street or somewhere,” Lapis lied. “Think she might cause any trouble today?”

“What? No, never,” Bon Bon said, cocking an eyebrow. “That pony apologizes if she trips over your hooves, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen an animal do something she doesn’t want it to.” Bon Bon’s expression became suddenly ominous. “Now, Pinkie Pie, on the other hoof…”

“Oh, I actually got an invitation from Pinkie earlier,” Lyra chimed in. She levitated a small card up from under the table, and Lapis saw that her magic was the same vivid orange color as her eyes. “’You’re Invited to Twilight’s Welcome-To-Ponyville Surprise Party.’ Who’s Twilight?”

“Purple unicorn with a baby dragon,” Lapis said. “I saw her earlier. She arrived in some golden chariot thing, I think the Princess sent her to check up on the festival preparations. I… don’t think she’s really the social type, though,” he added, remembering what she’d been saying to the dragon.

“Yeah, well, I’ll probably be busy selling candy all day anyway,” Bon Bon said.

Lyra shrugged. “I’m going. Pinkie’s Welcome-to-Ponyville parties are great! You know that already, right, Lapis?”

Uh-oh. “Uh, yeah, about that,” Lapis said. He felt his ears flick back, and he consciously flicked them back upright with an annoyed grimace. “I’ve actually… kinda dodged my welcome party so far.”

The reaction was immediate. Bon Bon’s eyebrows nearly shot off her face, and Lyra’s jaw dropped.

“WHAT?!” three voices shouted at once. Lapis flinched, then frowned. Three voices?

Lapis, Lyra, Nikki, and Bon Bon all looked off to the side of the booth, where the waitress - a pegasus with a dark brown coat and a fluffy white mane and tail - was standing and gaping at Lapis. She blushed, then sheepishly smiled. “Uh, I mean… may I take your orders?”

“Okay, let’s go over this again,” Bon Bon said, propping her forehead up on her hoof. “How did you end up not meeting Pinkie in the first place?”

“I don’t know,” Lapis admitted. “I walked into Ponyville three days ago, I remember seeing her right before I turned a corner onto the main street. Ten seconds later, I bump into Mayor Mare, who had somehow just finished talking to Pinkie about me, and then I didn’t see Pinkie for the rest of the day.”

“No, wait. There’s no way she lost you just because you turned a corner,” Lyra said. “Last time I tried that, she rounded the corner before I did!”

“Uh, I’m not sure how it happened either,” Lapis lied. He’d actually done everything he could to blend into the crowds as soon as he’d recognized Pinkie as one of the show’s main characters, but there was no reasonable way to explain that. “Maybe I just got lucky, or something? It’s… I don’t know, but it happened, and here I am.”

“Right,” Bon Bon said. “So, after that, you started avoiding Pinkie on purpose, because you didn’t really want a Welcome-to-Ponyville party.”

“Pretty much,” Lapis said. That was the truth - as he’d reasoned it, one of Pinkie’s parties would’ve been sure to put him into the main characters’ radars, which was the last thing he wanted.

“Okay. How?”

Lapis blinked. “What?”

“How have you been hiding from Pinkie?” Bon Bon said, cocking her ears forward. “I know a couple of ponies who’ve tried it, but nothing worked. Her Pinkie Sense just leads her right to them.”

Cartoon logic, Lapis thought. “Well… here, it’ll be easier just to show you,” he said, reaching back into his saddlebags with his magic. Across the table, Lyra raised a bite of omelet to her lips, while Bon Bon peered intently forward.

Lapis glanced around, then put the mask on the table. “I wear this.”

For a second, all three of them stared at it in silence. Then Bon Bon gave Lapis a flat look, while Lyra snorted before breaking into a giggling fit.

“No, really,” Bon Bon said. “How?”

Lapis picked up the mask, and Nikki gestured to it with her wing. “Really, this is it. If I wear it, and I don’t move, she doesn’t find me. I came up with the idea as a joke, but since then, I’ve done it four times. One of them was… about fifteen minutes ago, actually.”

“Not a very funny joke,” Bon Bon said, raising an eyebrow.

Lapis shrugged. “Well, it’s more like a reference, but yeah.”

“So, wait,” Lyra said, trying to suppress her continued laughter. “You’re telling me, that you stick that on your face…”

“Yep.”

“And you hold… reeeeally still…”

“Yeah.”

“And Pinkie looks at you, and thinks, that you’re a barrel?”

“I guess?”

Lyra’s giggles broke into snorting laughter. Lapis sighed, then tucked the mask back into his saddlebags with a grin. “Honestly, I’m half-convinced Pinkie thinks it’s a game, and she’s playing along for the laughs.”

Bon-Bon seemed to actually consider the idea for a second or two before shaking her head. “…No, I don’t think this fits with her sense of humor. But let’s get back on track. Why don’t you just go up to her, introduce yourself, and get it over with?”

“Uh, well, I’m still not completely settled in,” Lapis said, as Nikki cocked her head towards him with sudden interest. “My house is still a mess, everything’s in boxes, you know. And if she does decide to make room for the party by unpacking everything-”

Lapis paused. “Which doesn’t sound like it’ll happen, now that I say it out loud.”

“No, she’s done that before,” Bon Bon said, waving a hoof. Lyra nodded in confirmation, still giggling.

“…Alrighty then,” Lapis said, cocking an eyebrow. “Uh, yeah, if she does that, then I’ll have to re-organize everything. And that’ll take weeks to do, if all the repair jobs I’ve been getting are anything to go by.”

“Ooh! I’ve heard about some of those,” Lyra piped up. “You know, there’s a rumor going around that you’re actually using Mend-All spells for everything?”

Lapis hesitated, his ears tucking back. “I… don’t know if that’s true. I mean, I’ve fixed a lot of stuff, so it’s tough to-”

A sudden gust of wind blew open the door to the cafe, setting the bells above the door jingling and knocking a tray of drinks out of the waitress’ hooves. A few seconds passed - then, in the distance, some distinctly scratchy laughter began to echo into the shop.

Lapis recognized it immediately, and Bon Bon huffed. “Rainbow again… How many times this week do you think somepony’s asked her not to try any of her flying tricks above Ponyville streets?”

“About half as many times as I’ve had to pull tie-dye mane hair out of a crater in someone’s thatch,” Lapis muttered.

Lyra’s eyes widened. “Wait. What?! She crashes into ponies’-”

“Roofs, yeah. Luckily for her, most of the roofs around here are thatch, so it’s basically like landing in a big ol’ hay bale - I’d hate to imagine what would happen if she hit a tin roof.” Lapis shivered, then stood up. “Speaking of which, something else is probably broken by now, so I’d better get going.”

“See you at the Summer Sun Celebration!” Bon Bon called out as Lapis left, Nikki flapping off the table and onto his back just before the door closed.

As soon as Lapis was out of sight of the restaurant windows, he glanced around, then turned toward the edge of town and picked up his pace, only slowing down for a moment when Nikki took off and landed on his head.

“What?” Lapis asked, looking up towards the pigeon now glaring at him over top of his horn. “Yeah, I know I’ve got nothing to settle in. It’s just… listen, it’s for the best if nob-” He paused, rolling his eyes. “Sorry, if nopony, or as few ponies as possible, spend any time inside my house. Especially not Pinkie, or any of her friends.”

Nikki cocked a feathery eyebrow, folding her wings across her breast, and Lapis sighed. “I know it’s weird, but I’ve got too much to keep track of without having to take any pony’s involvement into account. For now… I really hate to ask again, but I could use a little help. You mind standing by a window, making some ruckus if Pinkie starts heading this way?”

Nikki huffed, then shrugged and sat straight on top of Lapis’ head. Lapis smiled awkwardly, then sighed.
The truth was, Lapis’ hope was to figure out some way of getting back to Earth. Not that he missed living in the same world as war, plague, and inflation, it was just that he had too many problems back on Earth that would get bigger if he left them alone. His student loan debt, for example. And if he got remotely caught up in whatever the show’s protagonists were doing, well, he could kiss his spare time for research goodbye.
What he had to do was clear: stay alive, don’t get too attached to any of the ponies here, don’t make any more problems before getting back to Earth, and definitely don’t get any of the protagonists’ attention. Especially not Pinkie Pie.
Just like social distancing, sort of. Ish. …Yeah, not really.
Grimacing, Lapis turned to face his destination: what looked like a tree, except with windows, lanterns, and a three-part door beneath a hanging sign: The Golden Oak Library.

Here’s hoping Pinkie hasn’t started arranging that surprise party yet, Lapis thought. He took a deep breath, then pushed open the door and stepped inside.

Much to Lapis’ relief, Pinkie was nowhere in sight. No decorations, either - he and Nikki had the library to themselves.

Nikki flew straight up to one of the windows and started peering around for any sign of Pinkie. Lapis, meanwhile, started working his way along the shelves, trying to figure out how the place was organized.

“1001 Beetles,” Lapis muttered, scanning the spines of the texts. “A Hoofbook of Butterflies, An Abbreviated History of Weevils, An Amateur’s Guide to Keeping Bees… Am I in arthropods? Biology? Entomology?” He glared at the lower spines of the books. “Sure, keep the English language and alphabet, but asking for the Dewey Decimal system is just too much, huh?”

Just for a moment, the titles of the books flickered, and Lapis’ eyes widened in shock as the crisp, clean letters were replaced with a multitude of small, simple pictograms - butterflies, spirals, and the like. Then, he blinked, and the texts were back in English.

“…You know what, that’s fair,” Lapis said, then went back to scanning titles without comment. C’mon, c’mon, magic magic magic, where’s the section on magic when you need it… Bingo!

An entire three bookcases’ worth of shelves, all devoted entirely to works on magic. The books here were older than the rest, and looked to be bound in some kinds of thick sheets of treated canvas - the corners gilded with ornate swirls and engravings, the spines dotted with tiny images. Lapis briefly considered looking for any books that matched his Cutie Mark, but didn’t see one in the first few seconds. Instead, he returned to scanning titles, sliding three volumes off the shelf and into his saddlebags with magic: The Horn is Quicker Than the Carriage: Transportation for the Time-Pressed Unicorn, Shape-Shifting and Other Ways of Escaping the Sordid, and a textbook-sized behemoth of yellowed parchment titled The Totaled Theories of Harmonick Resonance, and Their Applickation to Mending the Otherwise Irreparable.

Then, a golden glimmer at the corner of his eye caught his attention. He turned, and saw a decent-sized, red-and-gold volume tucked between two treatises on elemental spirits, pressed far enough back into the shelves that it was almost out of sight. Frowning, he pulled it forward with his magic, peering at the title.

“The Elements of Harmony: A Reference Guide,” he muttered. “Elements of Harmony… aren’t those the McGuffins, or holy relics, or ideals or something?”
He pulled the book over and flipped it open, quickly scanning through the pages. Yep, that’s what they are. Kindness, Laughter, Generosity, Honesty, and Loyalty… plus mystery element number six. Last known location… ancient castle of the royal pony sisters, in what is now the Everfree Forest.

“While their exact capabilities are unknown,” Lapis muttered, now reading aloud, “we know some of their power from the legends of their use by the Princesses Celestia and Luna. Among these, some of the most notable-”

A sharp coo from the window shattered Lapis’ concentration, and he glanced up to see Nikki pointing to the window.

Pinkie. Lapis looked around for a back door, but only spotted an open window - so, tucking the fourth book into his saddlebag, he jumped through with a grunt, Nikki following soon after.

A moment later, Pinkie burst through the door, carrying a massive basket full of rolled-up streamers and banners. “And not a moment to lose!” she chimed, setting down the basket and grinning, then scanning the shelves. “Ooh! Cozy!”
Pinkie grabbed a hank of pastel ribbons from the basket with her mouth, then zipped past the shelves towards a balcony, trailing confetti in her wake. A single, shining piece of crimson paper swung through the air, eventually settling on the shelf where moments before, the reference guide to the Elements had sat.

Not long after, Lapis had found himself a quiet, wooded spot not far from the edge of town, and he was taking the opportunity to skim the book on shape-shifting spells. So far, he wasn’t understanding a thing.

Lapis sighed, then shut the book and leaned back against the tree trunk, levitating a blueberry out of the small, woven basket at his side and over to Nikki, who was perched on a nearby branch. He’d been hoping to figure out a better way to disguise himself than hanging a badly-drawn mask off his horn, but that was turning out to be a longer-term project than expected. The author kept referencing things he didn’t understand, like “starswirls” and “channelling spirals” and “accordant conduciveness,” in ways that implied the reader already knew about them. Lapis felt like a kindergartener trying to read a doctoral thesis - confused, frustrated, and in need of a snack and a nap.

Absently, Lapis levitated the shape-shifting book back into his bags and took in his surroundings for a bit. Heh. Not too ugly, for a cartoon.
He and Nikki were in a lightly-wooded glade, nestled behind a small-but-substantial wall of thorny blackberry bushes. The thorns hadn’t been a joke, and Lapis had the hole in his saddlebag to prove it - but getting inside was well worth the effort. The sunlight slanted down through the branches in just the right way, casting dappled patches of gold-outlined shadow across the grassy floor of the glade. Peaceful and quiet, save for some…

…Oddly synchronized birdsong, now that Lapis bothered to stop and think about it. Lapis paused, cocking his ears, then sighed and turned to look in the direction of the noise.

Sure enough, there was an organized choir of birds sitting on a tree branch a few dozen yards down the road, singing a simple, regal fanfare in near-perfect harmony. Lapis stared at the birds for a few seconds, his head cocked to the side, then froze as he saw the conductor of the orchestra: a pale-yellow pegasus with a long, flowing pink mane and tail.

Flutterbye- no, wait, Fluttershy. Man, I really need to find somewhere besides my house to actually read in peace. Lapis grimaced, looking back at the glade. I’d hoped this was it… Dammit.

“C’mon, Nikki,” he muttered. “We gotta go… Nikki? Nikki!”

Over on the branch, Nikki jerked awake with a questioning coo.

“Twilight’s about to show up… I think,” Lapis said. “Sorry to wake you up, but I gotta go. You can stay here, if you want - shouldn’t be doing anything too exciting, I’m just heading to my house until-”

Nikki rolled her eyes, yawned, then flapped over and landed on Lapis’ head.

“…Or you’re still coming with,” Lapis muttered. “Alright. Let’s-”

“HELLO!”

Lapis flinched, and Fluttershy squeaked in surprise from down the road.

“Oh my.” Lapis looked over to see Twilight addressing the pegasus. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to frighten your birds. I’m just here to check up on the music, and it’s sounding beautiful…”

Man, she moves quietly when you’re not expecting her. Do either of them see me? …Nope, they don’t see me. Let’s get outta here, quick. Lapis glanced around, then squeezed past the thorn bushes and onto the main road, heading back toward Ponyville at as quick of a trot as would seem casual.

Not long after, Lapis had arrived at his place of residence in the village. It was a low, smallish wooden building that looked like a storefront. The outer walls were painted a warm, cozy hue of reddish-brown, and the roof was probably the only metal roof in the village (treated copper, painted over to look like ceramic shingles… for some reason.) To the right of the door, a broad, protruding series of square, yellowed glass panels created a large, curving window that reminded Lapis of a sixties diner - meanwhile, to the left of the door was a corkboard with three wooden buckets underneath.

Lapis wasted no time pushing open the door and hurrying inside, into the store proper. Warm sunlight poured in through the giant window, flecks of dust glinting like gold as they swirled through the air. Lapis’ hoofsteps echoed through the building as he turned to shut and lock the door, Nikki’s wingbeats no less jarring as she landed on the counter to the left.

Lapis looked around the room, taking in the single table and set of two chairs sitting beside the window. He’d only moved in three days ago, and taken the job of repair-pony on from the mayor the same day.

The show’s only just now starting… Dammit! Lapis sighed, his conversation with the mayor on that day echoing in his ears.

“…While it has been pretty quiet for the past five years, for the five years before that… well, there were six events that are now in history books, and all of them started or ended here.”

“All of them?” Lapis asked, trying to appear surprised.

Mayor Mare nodded, her expression weary. “Yes, all of them. I know the official story behind the Bullbear migration is that it started near Manehattan, but if you ask anypony in town, they’ll tell you that the Bullbears walked out of the Everfree first.”

Lapis nodded again, trying to appear as if he knew what those words meant. His nervousness must’ve passed for astonishment, because the mayor carried on.

“Anyway, if I said that the… strangeness… is the only reason that this town’s had trouble keeping a repair pony, I’d be lying. But it wouldn’t be a very big lie, and claiming that Ponyville’s been ‘pretty quiet’ for the last five years is only true by Ponyville standards. So, what I’m trying to say is… this job is not an easy one. It was very hard to keep up with the number of orders, even for seasoned repair-ponies with the best equipment they could get their hooves on.”

Mayor Mare sighed. “…And that’s really all that I’d say about it, if I weren’t in such a desperate situation. Right now, if some part of a pony’s house breaks, they have to either repair it themselves, or buy parts from out of town. And, well, to make a long story short, that means there are a lot more bits headed out of Ponyville than in.”

“Whoa-whoa-whoa, hold up,” Lapis said, cocking an eyebrow. “Are you telling me that your entire village’s economy is in decline because you’re missing ONE repair-pony?”

“Shh!” Mayor Mare had suddenly pressed her hoof against Lapis’ muzzle, almost faster than he’d registered her movement. She glanced around almost frantically, her ears tucked back against her head, then returned her gaze to his. “Not in decline, no. Just headed towards a temporary little recession.”

“Right,” Lapis said, pulling her hoof down. “I think I’ve got that.”

“And again, it’s really because we’re missing any repair-ponies, not just because we’re missing one,” Mayor Mare finished. She sighed again. “But yes, you seem to have the gist of it.

“So.” The mayor took a deep breath, suddenly all business. “With that in mind, my original offer still stands - and on top of that, I would be willing to rewrite a few bits of paperwork, which means that the cost of those monthly payments would be after taxes, instead of before them. Your job would mean that, on paper, you’d be an employee of the Town Hall, which would net you complimentary invitations to local events… that is, should you feel inclined to attend. And finally, if you accept, I’d be able to provide you with a five-hundred-bit bonus, to help you get your hooves on the ground. It would be… less than I feel you need, let alone what I feel you should have, but I’m afraid it’s the best I have to offer…”

Lapis shook his own head, dislodging himself from his memories, then sat at the table and took out the reference guide to the Elements, looking over the opening section as best as he could.

He’d taken the Mayor’s offer, of course. Based on her mentions of how “relatively quiet” Ponyville had been in the last five years, Lapis had assumed he’d arrived after the show’s protagonists had started solving local problems on a regular basis. He’d assumed that he’d have an easy job, he'd assumed that he wouldn’t get stuck cleaning up too many of the gang’s messes.

There was a saying about making assumptions, and Lapis wasn’t going to say it out loud - he had a sneaking suspicion that it might contain a racial slur, here.

I’ve gotten myself stuck fixing everything those six ponies break, Lapis thought, his eyes widening at the realization. I am going to die from overwork.
Focus. One problem at a time. For now… the Princess’ evil sister is coming back down from the moon tonight, and Twilight and the rest end up… turning her good with the Elements, I think. So, what does that mean for your average citizen of Ponyville?

“It means a few extra hours of night, then business as usual,” Lapis muttered. Nikki glanced over at him, and he waved a hoof. “Don’t worry about it. Thinking out loud.” Should probably stop doing that.

Lapis glanced out the window, stifling a yawn with one hoof. The sun was only just setting - he had time before the Mare in the Moon happened. A lot of time, actually. But he probably should try to stay awake. Tonight was important.

For the average citizen of Ponyville… a few extra hours of night, and then business as usual. But those few extra hours are going to be pretty terrifying. Lapis shivered, then stifled another, larger yawn. Wow. Really terrifying, actually. I can’t even imagine what’d it be like, not knowing when the sun’s going to come up. I mean, I know everything’s fine, but… the rest of town, not so much.

…Eh. They’ll be… fine…

Reading further into the Reference Guide, Lapis began to lose his train of thought, diverted instead to making a mental list of the Elements’ capabilities. And, according to legend, there were a lot of them - the two biggest ones seemed to be petrification, as in turning some kind of goat-thing into a statue, and banishment, as in sending-the-Princess’-evil-sister-to-the-moon. But there were also a lot of less-certain things about the Elements, and Lapis found that it was growing harder for him to focus on those as he read on. Possible origins, secondary abilities, effects on… Changelings, supposedly-resistant… forces…

…

Somewhere outside, a heavy oaken door came shut with a thunk, and Lapis yelped as he jerked awake, the book falling off his face and onto the ground. From a corner of the table, Nikki trilled as her own eyes snapped open.

“What the…” Lapis muttered, looking outside. It was late evening… really late evening, and there was a sparse crowd of ponies headed toward the Town Hall. Lapis frowned, confused, then facehoofed as he realized that he’d almost slept through the Summer Sun Celebration.

“Sorry for waking you up, Nikki,” Lapis muttered, rubbing his eyes, picking up the book and tucking it back into his saddlebag. “I don’t think I can miss this one. Try and get some sleep, I should be back pretty soon.”

Nikki yawned, then shut her eyes and dozed off at once. Lapis, meanwhile, headed to the door, slung his saddlebags over his back, and set his jaw.

Let’s get this over with, he thought. Then, he opened the door, marched through, and set off towards the Town Hall, allowing it to swing shut behind him.

As Lapis walked into Town Hall, he kept his head down - partially to avoid attracting attention, and partially because his nose was buried inside of The Reference Guide again. He wasn’t really reading so much as skimming, looking for anything that vaguely resembled a blast radius - so far, the Elements of Harmony seemed precise for magical superweapons, but Lapis still wanted to be ready. Just in case there was some mess that needed fixing.

He shut the book once he was a few steps inside, tucking it back into his saddlebag and looking for someplace to stand that wasn’t too isolated. Unfortunately, Town Hall was mostly open space - there were some balconies here and there, supported by Roman-looking pillars and hung with banners and curtains, but taking shelter behind one of those would definitely be a little odd.

The goal here, Lapis thought, is to not get the attention of… Nightmare Moon, I think? Someone hiding behind a pillar or curtain before she even shows up would be really suspicious, if she noticed me… but once she does show up, what’s one more frightened face in the crowd?

The plan was simple, then - all Lapis had to do was be one more member of the audience, and everything would be fine. He set off for an open spot on the floor, taking a seat among some other citizens, glancing around for any sign of Pinkie, then whipping out the Reference Guide and starting to read.

…Moving past the realm of recorded stories and into the murky muddle of pure speculation, we must wonder what other uses, besides the protection of Equestria, such a powerful set of magical foci as the Elements could provide. If their use could send a mare to the moon, then who’s to say that they could not send other ponies to less permanent destinations? Bring their Bearer to the sites of trouble in a ray of rainbow light…

Interesting, Lapis thought. Doesn’t sound like the Elements are to blame for my arrival here, though. Still, magical foci are potentially capable of transportation-

A fanfare of birdsong began to trill through the air, and Lapis snapped the book shut, tucking it into his saddlebags and training his gaze on the center stage, the murmuring of the ponies around him fading into a hush. Spotlights came down from the banner-strung ceiling above, training on the center stage. There, Mayor Mare stood, her cyan ascot as puffy as ever below her white shirt-collar.

…Why does she even wear those, anyway? Just to look fancy? Why not wear a whole shirt, then, instead of just the collar? Who even makes just a shirt collar?

“Fillies and gentlecolts,” Mayor Mare began. “As mayor of Ponyville, it is my great pleasure…”

Lapis tuned out the Mayor’s speech, looking around the room one last time. It seemed like every face in the hall was happy at the moment, either smiling in excitement or wide-eyed in anticipation, cheering as the Mayor announced the speech.

There was only one exception. Half a dozen yards to Lapis’ left was a purple unicorn staring up at a window. She seemed to spot something and flinched away, her ears tucking back as she looked at the stage, and Lapis’ eyes widened as he recognized two things at once:

One, the purple unicorn was Twilight.

Two, she was terrified.

And for half a second, Lapis’ mouth opened to say something, to reassure her, to say that everything would be fine. And then he remembered that saying so might change the fact. He turned away, grimacing, flicking his own ears upright atop his head, and glared at the stage. Alright, Princess Edgy. Just get this over with. Don’t make these ponies worry for longer than they need to.

“…The bringer of harmony to all of Equestria… Princess Celestia!” Mayor Mare announced. The spotlights shifted to a balcony above the stage, the birds sang their fanfare, and a white unicorn pulled a rope to open the curtains, revealing… an empty platform.

“This can’t be good,” Lapis heard Twilight say. He said nothing, staring up at the balcony and tuning out the chatter. Any second now. Come on.

A tendril of sparkling indigo smoke wafted through a window, toward the balcony. It was followed by another, and another, more washing through the windows, their shape shifting like the Northern Lights. They coalesced on the balcony, concentrating into a churning, swirling mass - until suddenly, they parted, and Lapis was shocked to feel a jolt of fear run through him.

Just before he’d… arrived in Equestria, Lapis had discovered a genre of Internet videos called analog horror. A big part of the better videos were pictures of things that looked mostly-human, but were just warped enough to fall into the uncanny valley. The resulting photos showed people that seemed normal, if distorted, but some ancient part of the human psyche took one glance and flagged it as a threat - as something that looked human, but absolutely wasn’t.

The silver-armored, ink-black thing on the balcony looked like a pony. But it wasn’t one. Its legs and horn were too long and thin, its ears and wings ended in points that were too sharp, and its eyes were narrow, utterly black slits inside of shimmering teal irises. In place of a mane and tail, it had that shifting, churning indigo smoke, that twinkled with faint light like dying stars.

“Nightmare Moon!” Twilight murmured, and Spike fainted off her back, flopping to the ground with a thud. Lapis shivered, then forced down his fear. It’s just a cartoon, dumbass! Get a grip! Come on!

“Oh, my beloved subjects!” Nightmare Moon crooned, casting her gaze over the crowd before her, letting her voice echo in the stunned silence. Lapis suppressed another shiver as that slit-pupiled gaze passed over him, but she didn’t so much as hesitate at the sight of him. “It’s been so long since I’ve seen your precious little sun-loving faces.”

“What did you do with our Princess?!” a scratchy voice called, and Rainbow Dash popped out of the crowd, hovering a few yards above ground level and meeting the monster’s gaze with a glare. She tried to take off towards Nightmare Moon, but an orange Earth-pony in a Stetson held her back by her tail.

Nightmare Moon only laughed, a cold, brittle noise that sent a familiar twist of emotions through Lapis’ gut. “Why, am I not royal enough for you? Don’t you know who I am?”

“Ooh! Ooh!” Pinkie Pie began, but she didn’t ramble for long before the same orange pony shoved a cupcake in her face. Whoever that is, Lapis thought, they’re alright.

“Does my crown no longer count, now that I have been imprisoned for a thousand years?” Nightmare Moon asked, her face twisting in anger, her wings lifting her from the ground with slow, snapping beats. “Did you not recall the legend? Did you not see the signs?”

“I did! And I know who you are!”

It was Twilight, and the crowd of ponies around her took several steps away from her as she spoke, glancing nervously between the mare and the monster as if expecting a duel to erupt at any moment.

“You’re the Mare in the Moon,” she said. “Nightmare Moon.”

The monster smiled into the gasps that followed, her eyes gleaming. “Well well well. Somepony who remembers me. Then, you also know why I’m here.”

“You’re here to… to…” Twilight began, her voice faltering as she looked around her, seeing the ponies’ faces turning to her, waiting for something, anything, that might tell them how unsafe they were. And again, the monster laughed.

“Remember this day, little ponies, for it was your last. From this moment forth…” Nightmare Moon spread her wings wide, her lips splitting to show too many narrow, pointed teeth as her mane and tail grew into a swirling, thundering vortex above. “The night will last forever!”

Gasps and screams filled the air, and above it all, Nightmare Moon’s laughter continued to ring out, cold and clear and sharp as black ice. Lapis stood stock-still, paralyzed, his gut twisting with emotion more strongly than ever before. Fear, and anger, and…

“Seize her!” Mayor Mare boomed, pointing her hoof. “Only she knows where the princess is!”

Three guards took to the air. Nightmare Moon’s head snapped to face them with uncanny speed, her eyes flaring white as she reared up, and Lapis’ fur stood on end just as he recognized the smell of ozone. The guards had no time to react, bolts of lightning sending them spinning back to earth with sharp cracks. The monster didn’t hesitate, her mane and tail pulling around herself like a shield, and then rushing toward the doors, sending ponies screaming and jumping out of the way, Lapis crouching down as he prepared to-

And then the smoke cleared, and Nightmare Moon was gone, and… shockingly, no ponies seemed hurt. Rainbow escaped her restrainer a moment later, zipping out the door in a prismatic blur and out of sight. Twilight was the next pony through the doors, taking off at a gallop toward the edge of town, Spike slung over her back.

…That was… unsettling. Lapis took a slow, shaking breath, letting the tension leave his limbs as the rest of the building’s occupants realized that nobody seemed hurt, save for the guards - who had only just gotten up, and were wincing as they touched the scorch marks on their coats. Lapis sat down with a thump, shutting his eyes against his fatigue, trying to clear his mind and think. What happens next? Come on! No time to waste! What happens?!

Rainbow chased Nightmare Moon for a bit, but there’s no way she caught her. Pinkie, Fluttershy, and… uh, the other two, I don’t know. But I saw Twilight heading for the edge of town, to go… where?

“Hey! Equestria to Lapis!”

A hoof came down on Lapis’ shoulder, and he spun to face its owner, his eyes snapping open. Bon Bon was standing there, her hoof halfway off the ground, her glare melting into a look of surprise.

“Sorry,” Lapis muttered, shoving his panic back down. “What is it, what’s the matter?”

“Besides the obvious, you mean? You are,” Bon Bon said, putting her hoof back down. “Are you doing alright? As soon as…”

“I’m fine,” Lapis said, then rolled his eyes as he flicked his ears back upright. “Well, as fine as any of us can be, anyway. Just trying to figure out what happens next.”

“Who knows,” Bon Bon muttered.

I do… wait, I do! The library! Lapis realized. Twilight was headed to the library, to look up information on the Elements of Harmony! Then she and her friends head out for the forest, and go through some trials or whatever, and then… they beat her, somehow. With the Elements. What do those do, again?

Mayor Mare was talking as Lapis reached into his saddlebag and pulled out the Reference Guide, but right then it was just background noise. He started flicking through the book to the Recorded Uses section, then slowed down as a set of words caught his eye. There are six Elements of Harmony, but only five are known…

“Wait a second,” Lapis muttered, as an all-too-familiar tingle settled into the pit of his stomach. “I’m forgetting something.”

“Like what?” Bon Bon said, cocking an eyebrow at him.

“Like something about this book,” Lapis muttered. “It’s about the Elements of Harmony, and-” His eyes shot wide open, and his gut lurched. “…I’ll be right back.”

“Wait, what?” Bon Bon said, but Lapis had already stood up and taken off for the door at a gallop. “Hey! Come back here!”

…

“Shit, shit, shit!” Lapis hissed, as the library came into view ahead of him. “I’m a fucking idiot!”

Twilight was in that library, right now, looking for information on the Elements of Harmony. A reference guide, to be exact. But that reference guide wasn’t in the library - it was in Lapis’ saddlebags, because he just had to go and stick his nose in the stupid fucking MacGuffin book!

The library was within a few dozen feet now, and Lapis slowed down, gasping and puffing for breath. There was a small crowd of ponies advancing on the library, too, and Lapis identified one of them as Pinkie by her bouncing gait. Well, there goes sneaking into the building. Plan B it is.
Grimacing, Lapis made his way around and out of sight to the window he’d jumped through previously, opening it just in time to hear a door closing.

Lapis took a moment to steady his breathing. Okay. This’ll be tricky, but I’ve got it. Get this book in front of Twilight, or else Equestria is doomed. Do it without being spotted, or else I’m doomed. I was fast enough getting here, she might not have even noticed the book is missing. It’s pretty quiet in there right now, so I should be able to-

A crash jolted him free from his thoughts, quickly followed by the sound of multiple books hitting the floor. Lapis winced, then hazarded a peek through the window.

Twilight was inside, frantically pulling books off the shelves and throwing them to the ground as soon as she’d glanced at them. “Elements, elements, elements…” she was muttering. “How can I stop Nightmare Moon without the Elements of Harmony?!”

Lapis winced. Well, so much for getting it done before she notices.

“And just what are the Elements of Harmony?!” Rainbow Dash’s voice snapped, and suddenly she was there, nose-to-nose with a startled Twilight. “And how did you know about Nightmare Moon, huh?” Rainbow’s eyes widened with fury. “Are you a spy?!”

…Really?

Someone inside seemed to share Lapis’ complaint, because Rainbow was suddenly yanked away from the innocent unicorn. Lapis leaned just a little further, and grinned as he saw the same Stetson-wearing Earth-pony from the town hall - orange coat, golden-yellow mane and tail, green eyes. Not far behind her were Pinkie, Fluttershy, and the white-coated unicorn who’d pulled open the curtain.

“Simmer down, Sally. She ain’t no spy,” the Earth-pony said. Then, she turned and took a few, careful steps toward Twilight. “But she sure knows what’s going on. Don’t you, Twilight?”

The other ponies all crowded forward to listen, Twilight shut her eyes and sighed, and Lapis saw his opportunity. Slowly, carefully, he levitated the book through the window and onto the nearest bookshelf, then ducked back into cover and let out a relieved sigh as Twilight began speaking. Orange, whatever your real name is, you’re a godsend. Now all I need to do is make sure they find the book…

“…But I don’t know what they are, where to find them,” Twilight was saying. “I don’t even know what they do!”

“The Elements of Harmony: A Reference Guide!” Pinkie’s voice chirped, and Lapis froze as he realized that she was right next to the window.

A moment later, Twilight spoke again. “How did you find that?!”

Don’t be suspicious. Don’t be suspicious. Don’t be suspicious…

“It was under E-e!” Pinkie sang.

“…Oh,” Twilight muttered, and a moment later, the sound of turning pages filled the room. “There are six Elements of Harmony…”

Lapis slumped to the ground in relief, and stayed there for a few seconds. I did it… I did it. Town’s saved. …Well, not yet, but it will be.

Shaking, Lapis got up and headed back for Town Hall at a slow walk, failing to notice the patch of sparkling smoke that took his place at the window a few moments later. I need a nap, he thought.

The sound of Nightmare Moon’s chilling laughter echoed in his ears, and for a second, he remembered sitting behind a two-foot-wide slit of a window in a yellow-painted room the size of a closet, the feathery snow outside coming down thick enough to white out everything beyond arm’s length.
Lapis shivered as the knot of emotion in his gut twisted again. Or a drink. Maybe both.

He didn’t notice the sparkling indigo smoke that had been lingering in his shadow, didn’t see it stop in place after he thought of that laughter. The smoke stayed there for only a few seconds, then took off for the Everfree Forest.

Not until the sound of a door opening echoed down the street did Lapis hazard a glance back, just in time to see all six of the ponies trotting out of the library, toward the dark patch on the horizon that Lapis knew to be the Everfree Forest.
Good, they’re getting started, he thought. He turned to leave, but stopped, looking back. …Without saying anything to anyone about where they’re going? Just… leaving the entire town to worry about what’s going on?

Lapis sighed, then turned himself back toward the center of town and started walking. Heroes gotta hero, I guess. It’s not my problem, I’ve just got to wait-

“LAPIS PRINT!”

“Gah!” Lapis yelped, spinning to face the speaker. “F- Bon Bon, you about gave me a heart attack just then! Don’t sneak up on ponies that way-”

“Oh, she about gave you a heart attack?” Lyra said, trotting into view from behind a scowling Bon Bon. “Lapis, the way you galloped off, we thought your house had caught fire or something! What was that about?!”

Lapis groaned. Alright, time to bullshit. “It was about Twilight Sparkle, the Princess’… emissary, envoy, student, whatever. The purple unicorn, the one who knew who Nightmare Moon was. I…” He paused, taking a second to come up with a plausible explanation. “I saw her heading out, and I thought she might be able to do something about getting the Princess back. I was able to catch her and some other ponies - Rainbow Dash, Pinkie Pie, Fluttershy, and two others I didn’t know, heading into the Everfree.”

Lyra gasped, and Bon Bon huffed and rolled her eyes. “Great. Now, on top of everything else, the Mayor needs to organize a search party, too. Describe the other two?”

Lapis blinked. Let’s maybe not get a search party, that might throw off the script… “Uh, an orange Earth-pony with a brown hat, and a white unicorn with a purple mane.”

“Applejack and Rarity,” Bon Bon muttered, her eyes narrowing. She sighed. “Well, if Applejack’s there, then they’ve got a good reason to go. She’s the orange pony,” Bon Bon added. “Part of the Apple family, has a few bits more common sense than the other ponies in the envoy’s… expedition.”

“Wait, why are they going into the Everfree at all?” Lyra asked, her ears tucked back as she stared at the forest. “Won’t all the extra night just make it even more dangerous in there?”

Lapis hesitated, watching Lyra’s knees start to quiver. She’s… terrified. They both are - hell, the whole village probably is. I would be, too.

…You know what? Fuck it.

“They were talking about some magical artifacts hidden in there,” Lapis said, and at once, Lyra and Bon Bon perked up. “The Elements of Harmony. Apparently, they might be able to stop Nightmare Moon.”

“Are you sure?” Bon Bon asked, leaning forward.

“Positive,” Lapis replied. “Twilight definitely seemed to know her magic, and she is the princess’ student. If anyone in this village knows what to do about Nightmare, it’s her.”

Bon Bon nodded slowly, and a cautious, hesitant smile crept across Lyra’s face. “So… that means we only need to hold out until they defeat Nightmare Moon?”

“If they can…” Lapis said. “…Yes.”

Lyra’s smile widened, and even Bon Bon exhaled a sigh of relief. Lapis watched, and felt half a smile creep onto his own face.

Lapis knew he shouldn’t have gotten involved. He knew that he didn’t have to do anything at all, and that everything would still turn out alright, because that was just the kind of show this was. He knew that every pony he interacted with, every pony that he made a good impression on, would be one more potential interruption on the path to getting back to Earth.
But maybe, as long as it wasn’t Twilight and her friends… maybe it was alright to make an exception. Lyra and Bon Bon had cared enough about his welfare to chase after him, it was the least he could do to help them keep calm.
Maybe, just maybe, it was okay to care about the ponies around him.

Author's Note

Hey, everypony, and welcome to the fic! I'm a bit late to the party, I know, but better late than never, right?

So, basically we're looking at what it says on the box. One more Ponified Human in Equestria fic for the pile, except the human isn't allowed to interact with the Mane 6. I've done some plotting ahead, so I'll probably be writing this at least until Lapis is done settling in. After that, I'll keep going until I get bored of it, which sadly may not mean "until it's done." So... care about this story at your own risk, I guess?

Oh, I should mention, I am working with some ground rules here, so that I don't end up writing The 10,000th Power Fantasy Isekai Harem Anime: Equestria Edition. These are listed below, so read them if you care, head to the next chapter if you don't!

The We-Shalt-Nots
- Alicorn-ify the MC. Let's be real, here - he'd magic himself home as a human, with a great big pile of gold, and then spend the rest of his life trying to forget that one time he was a god. Which, don't get me wrong, would make for a fun short story, but would also make for a terrible conclusion.
- Build a harem around the MC. That's... kind of a lot of mane-care products to keep in one shower, and a lot of ways to split your attention away from earning enough money to successfully pay off your student loans.
- Write Edginess. I'm definitely biased about what counts as "edginess," but I'll do my best, which means no torture/self-harm/slow and gruesome character deaths. Also, I'm not going to just throw in a serial killer or a Sith Lord for funsies, and the only pony who's allowed to say stuff like "I am the shadow that stalks in the night" is Luna.
(She is required to say it with her most prim and proper voice, and to be confused when the ponies around her start giggling.)
- Write Gary-Stuage. Pronounce that word so that it rhymes with "sewage." Again, I'm probably biased, I'll do my best. He's not going to be the "All Good Characters Like Me, All Bad Characters Hate But Secretly Like Me" guy, he's going to be either "the repair guy who keeps showing up in weird places" or "uh, who?"